GIFT   OF 


POSSIBLE  LIMITATIONS  OF  THE 
ELECTIVE  SYSTEM. 

X. 

BY  G.  H.  PALMER. 

[REPRINTED  FROM  THE  ANDOVER  REVIEW  FOR  DECEMBER,  1886.] 


POSSIBLE  LIMITATIONS  OF  THE  ELECTIVE 
SYSTEM. 

I. 

IN  a  paper  published  in  tne  "  Andover  Eeview  "  of  November, 
1885,  I  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  a  new  principle  is  at  work 
in  American  education.  That  principle,  briefly  stated,  is  this: 
the  student  now  consciously  shares  in  his  own  upbuilding.  His 
studies  are  knitted  closely  to  his  personal  life.  Under  this  influ- 
ence a  new  species  of  power  is  developed.  Scholarship  broadens 
and  deepens,  boyishness  diminishes,  teacher  and  pupil  meet  less 
artificially.  The  college,  as  an  institution,  wins  fresh  life.  Public 
confidence  awakens ;  pupils,  benefactions,  flow  in.  Over  what  I 
wrote  an  eager  controversy  has  arisen,  a  controversy  which  must 
have  proved  instructive  to  those  who  need  instruction  most.  In 
the  last  resort  questions  of  education  are  decided  by  educators,  as 
those  of  sanitation  by  sanitary  engineers ;  but  in  both  cases  the 
decision  has  reference  to  public  needs,  and  people  require  to  be 
instructed  in  the  working  of  appliances  which  are  designed  for  no 
other  end  than  their  comfort.  There  is  danger  that  such  instruc- 
tion may  not  be  given.  Professional  men  become  absorbed  in 
their  art  and  content  themselves  with  reticence,  leaving  the  public 
ignorant  of  the  devices  by  which  its  health  is  to  be  preserved.  A 
great  opportunity,  therefore,  comes  to  the  common  householder 
when  these  professional  men  fall  foul  of  one  another.  In  press- 
ing arguments  home  they  frequently  take  to  ordinary  speech,  and 
anybody  who  then  lends  an  ear  learns  of  the  mysteries.  The 
present  discussion,  I  am  sure,  has  brought  this  informatory  gain 
to  every  parent  who  reads  the  "Andover  Review"  and  has  a 
studious  boy.  The  gain  will  have  been  greater  because  of  the 
candor  and  courtesy  with  which  the  attacking  party  has  delivered 

Copyright,  1886,  by  HOCGHTON,  Mimj*  &  Co. 

427454 


2         :P&$tlile-'l%tflit&liQfts;0f.tlie  Elective  System. 

its  assault.  The  contest  has  been  earnest.  Its  issues  have  been 
rightly  judged  momentous.  For  good  or  for  ill,  the  choice  youth 
of  the  land  are  to  be  shaped  by  whatever  educational  policy 
finally  wins.  Yet,  so  far  as  I  recall,  no  unkind  word  has  slipped 
from  the  pen  of  one  of  my  stout  opponents ;  no  disparagement  of 
man  or  college  has  mixed  with  the  energetic  advocacy  of  principle. 
The  discussion  has  set  in  well  toward  things.  I  cannot  call  this 
remarkable.  Of  course  it  is  not  easy  to  be  fair  and  strong  at 
once.  Sweetness  and  light  are  often  parted.  Yet  we  rightly 
expect  the  scholar's  life  to  civilize  him  who  pursues  it,  and  we 
anticipate  from  books  a  refinement  of  the  spirit  and  the  manners 
as  well  as  the  understanding.  M.y  opponents  have  been  scholars, 
and  have  spoken  as  scholars  speak.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  linger  in 
their  kindly  contentious  company.  So  I  gladly  accept  the  invita- 
tion of  the  editors  of  the  "  Review  "  to  sum  up  our  discussion  and 
to  add  some  explanatory  last  words. 

The  papers  which  have  appeared  fall  into  two  easily  distinguish- 
able classes,  —  the  descriptive  and  the  critical.  To  the  former  I 
devote  but  a  brief  space,  so  much  more  direct  is  the  bearing  of  the 
latter  on  the  main  topic  of  debate,  the  question,  namely,  what 
course  the  higher  education  can  and  what  it  cannot  now  take. 
Yet  the  descriptive  papers  perform  a  service  and  deserve  a  wel- 
come word.  Suspecting  that  I  was  showing  off  Harvard  rather 
favorably,  professors  planted  elsewhere  have  attempted  to  make 
an  equally  favorable  exhibit  of  their  own  colleges.  In  my  mani- 
festo they  have  seen  "a  coveted  opportunity  to  bring  forward 
corresponding  statistics  which  have  not  been  formed  under  the 
Harvard  method."  Perhaps  this  was  to  mistake  my  aim  a  little. 
I  did  intend  to  advance  my  college  in  public  esteem ;  she  de- 
serves that  of  me  in  everything  I  write.  But  primarily  I 
thought  of  myself  as  the  expounder  of  an  important  policy,  which 
happens  to  have  been  longer  perceived  and  more  elaborately 
studied  at  Harvard  than  elsewhere.  I  hope  I  did  not  imply 
that  Harvard,  having  this  excellence,  has  all  others.  She  has 
many  weaknesses,  which  should  not  be  shielded  from  discerning 
discussion.  Nor  did  I  intend  to  commit  the  injustice  to  Harvard 
—  an  injustice  as  gross  as  it  is  frequent  —  of  treating  her  as  a 
mere  embodiment  of  the  elective  system.  Harvard  is  a  complex 
and  august  institution,  possessed  of  all  the  attractions  which  can 
be  lent  by  age,  tradition,  learning,  continually  renewed  resources, 
fortunate  situation,  widespread  clientage,  enthusiastic  loyalty,  and 
forceful  guidance.  She  is  the  intellectual  mother  of  us  all,  hon- 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  3 

ored  certainly  by  me,  and  I  believe  by  thousands  of  others,  for  a 
multiplicity  of  subtle  influences  which  stretch  far  outside  her 
special  modes  of  instruction.  But  for  the  last  half  century  Har- 
vard has  been  developing  a  new  and  important  policy  of  educa- 
tion. Coincident  with  this  development  she  has  attained  enormous 
popular  esteem  and  internal  power.  The  value  and  limits  of  this 
policy,  the  sources  of  this  esteem  and  power,  I  wish  everybody, 
colleges  and  populace,  to  scrutinize.  To  make  these  things  under- 
stood is  to  help  the  higher  education  everywhere. 

In  undertaking  this  quasi  philosophical  task,  I  count  it  a  piece 
of  good  fortune  to  have  provoked  so  many  lucid  accounts  of  what 
other  colleges  are  doing.  The  more  of  these  the  better.  The  public 
cannot  be  too  persistently  reminded  of  the  distinctive  merits  of 
this  college  and  of  that.  Let  each  be  as  zealous  as  possible ;  gains 
made  by  one  are  gains  for  all.  Depreciatory  rivalry  between  col- 
leges is  as  silly  as  it  is  when  religious  sects  quarrel  in  the  midst  of 
a  perishing  world.  Probably  such  rivalries  have  their  rise  in  the 
dull  supposition  that  a  fixed  constituency  of  pupils  exists  some- 
where, which  if  not  turned  toward  one  college  may  be  drawn  to 
another.  As  the  old  political  economists  tell  of  a  "  wages  fund," 
fixed  and  constant  in  each  community,  so  college  governors  are  apt 
to  imagine  a  public  pupil-hoard,  not  susceptible  of  much  increase 
or  diminution,  which  may  by  inadvertence  fall  into  other  hands 
than  their  own.  In  reality  each  college  creates  its  constituency. 
Its  students  come,  in  the  main,  from  the  inert  mass  of  the  uncol- 
legiate  public.  Only  one  in  eight  among  Harvard  students  is  a 
son  of  a  Harvard  graduate  ;  and  probably  the  small  colleges  beget 
afresh  an  even  larger  percentage  of  their  students.  On  this  ac- 
count the  small  colleges  have  been  a  power  in  the  land.  To  dis- 
parage them  shall  never  be  my  office.  In  a  larger  degree  than 
the  great  universities  they  spread  the  college  idea  among  people 
who  would  not  otherwise  possess  it.  The  boy  who  lives  within 
fifty  miles  of  one  of  them  reflects  whether  he  will  or  will  not  have 
a  college  training.  Were  there  no  college  in  the  neighborhood, 
he  might  never  consider  the  matter  at  all.  It  is  natural  enough 
for  undergraduates  to  decry  every  college  except  their  own ;  but 
those  who  love  education  generously,  and  who  seek  to  spread  it  far 
and  wide,  cannot  afford  the  luxury  of  envy.  One  common  danger 
besetting  us  all  should  bind  us  together.  In  the  allurements  of 

k  commerce  boys  may  forget  that  college  is  calling.  They  do  forget 
it.  According  to  my  computations  the  number  of  persons  in  the 
New  England  colleges  to-day  is  about  the  same  as  the  number  in 


4          Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

the  insane  asylums;  but  little  more  than  the  number  of  idiots. 
Probably  this  number  is  not  increasing  in  proportion  to  popula- 
tion. Professor  Newton,  of  Oberlin,  finds  that  the  increase  of 
students  during  the  ten  years  between  1870  and  1880,  in  twenty 
of  our  oldest  leading  colleges,  was  less  than  three  and  a  half 
per  cent.,  the  population  of  the  United  States  increasing  during 
the  same  period  twenty-three  per  cent.  In  view  of  facts  like 
these,  careful  study  of  the  line  along  which  college  growth  is  still 
possible  becomes  a  necessity.  It  will  benefit  all  colleges  alike. 
No  one  engaged  in  it  has  a  side  to  maintain.  We  are  all  alike 
seekers.  Whatever  instructive  experience  any  college  can  con- 
tribute to  the  common  study,  and  whatever  pupils  she  may  thereby 
gain,  will  be  matter  for  general  rejoicing. 

To  such  a  study  the  second,  or  critical,  class  of  papers  furnish 
important  stimulus ;  for  these  have  not  confined  themselves  to 
describing  institutions  :  they  have  gone  on  to  discuss  the  value  and 
limits  of  the  principle  which  actuates  the  new  education  every- 
where. In  many  respects  their  writers  and  I  are  in  full  accord. 
In  moral  aim  we  always  are,  and  generally,  too,  in  our  estimate 
of  the  present  status.  We  all  confess  that  the  conditions  of  col- 
lege education  have  changed,  that  the  field  of  knowledge  has 
enlarged,  that  a  liberal  training  nowadays  must  fit  men  for  more 
than  the  four  professions  of  preaching,  teaching,  medicine,  and 
law.  We  agree  that  the  prescribed  systems  of  the  past  are  out- 
grown. We  do  not  want  them.  We  doubt  whether  they  were 
well  suited  to  their  own  time ;  we  are  sure  they  will  never  fit 
ours.  Readjustment  of  curricula,  we  all  declare,  must  be  under- 
taken if  the  higher  education  is  to  retain  its  hold  on  our  people. 
Further  still,  we  agree  in  the  direction  of  this  readjustment.  My 
critics,  no  less  than  I,  believe  that  a  widely  extended  scope  must 
be  given  to  individual  choice.  With  the  possible  exception  of 
Professor  Denison,  about  whose  opinion  I  am  uncertain,  everybody 
who  has  taken  part  in  th$  controversy  recognizes  the  elective  prin- 
ciple as  a  beneficial  one  and  maintains  that  in  some  form  or  other 
it  has  come  to  stay.  People  generally  are  not  aware  what  a  con- 
sensus of  opinion  on  this  point  late  years  have  brought  about.  To 
rid  ourselves  once  for  all  of  further  controversy  let  us  weigh  well 
the  words  of  my  opponents. 

Mr.  Brearley  begins  his  criticism  addressed  to  the  New  York 
Harvard  Club  thus  :  "  We  premise  that  every  one  accepts  the  elec- 
tive principle.  Some  system  based  on  that  principle  must  be 
established.  No  one  wants  the  old  required  systems  back,  or  any 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  5 

new  required  system."  Professor  Howison  says :  "  An  elective 
system,  in  its  proper  place,  and  under  its  due  conditions,  is  de- 
monstrably  sound."  Professor  Ladd  does  not  express  himself 
very  fully  on  this  point  in  the  "  Andover  Review,"  but  his  opin- 
ions may  be  learned  from  the  "  New  Englander "  for  January, 
1885.  When,  in  1884,  Yale  College  reformed  its  curriculum  and 
introduced  elective  studies,  it  became  desirable  to  instruct  the 
graduates  about  the  reasons  for  a  step  which  had  been  long  re- 
sisted. After  a  brief  trial  of  the  new  system,  Professor  Ladd 
published  his  impressions  of  it.  I  strongly  commend  his  candid 
paper  to  the  attention  of  those  who  still  believe  the  old  methods 
the  safer.  He  asserts  that  "  a  perfect  and  final  course  of  college 
study  is,  if  not  an  unattainable  ideal,  at  present  an  impossible 
achievement."  The  considerations  which  were  "  the  definite  and 
almost  compulsory  reasons  for  instituting  a  comprehensive  change  " 
he  groups  under  the  following  heads :  (1)  the  need  of  modern  lan- 
guages ;  (2)  the  crowding  of  studies  in  the  senior  year;  (3)  the 
heterogeneous  and  planless  character  of  the  total  course ;  (4)  the 
need  of  making  allowance  for  the  tastes,  fhe  contemplated  pur- 
suits, and  the  aptitudes  of  the  individual  student.  Substantially, 
these  are  the  evils  of  prescription  which  I  pointed  out ;  only,  in 
my  view,  they  are  evils  not  confined  to  a  single  year.  Stating 
his  observation  of  the  results  of  election,  Professor  Ladd  says: 
"Increased  willingness  in  study,  and  even  a  new  and  marked 
enthusiasm  on  the  part  of  a  considerable  number  of  students, 
is  another  effect  of  the  new  course  already  realized.  The  entire 
body  of  students  in  the  upper  classes  is  more  attentive,  regular, 
interested,  and  even  eager,  than  ever  before."  "  More  intimate 
and  effective  relations  are  secured  in  many  cases  between  teachers 
and  pupils." 

These  convictions  in  regard  to  the  efficiency  which  the  elective 
principle  lends  to  education  are  not  confined  to  my  critics.  Let 
me  cite  testimony  from  other  leading  colleges.  The  last  Amherst 
Catalogue  records  (page  24)  that  "  excellent  results  have  appeared 
from  this  [the  elective]  method.  The  special  wants  of  the  student 
are  thus  met,  his  zest  and  progress  in  his  work  are  increased,  and 
his  association  with  his  teachers  becomes  thus  more  close  and 
intimate."  President  Robinson  says,  in  his  annual  report  for 
1885  to  the  Corporation  of  Brown  University :  "  There  are  ad- 
vantages in  a  carefully  guarded  system  of  optional  studies  not 
otherwise  obtainable.  The  saving  of  time  in  preparing  for  a 
special  calling  in  life  is  something,  and  the  cumulative  zeal  in 


6          Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

given  lines  of  study,  where  a  gratified  and  growing  taste  is  ever 
beckoning  onward,  is  still  more.  But  above  all,  some  provision 
for  choice  among  ever-multiplying  courses  of  study  has  become  a 
necessity."  In  addressing  the  American  Institute  of  Instruction 
at  Bar  Harbor,  on  July  7th  of  the  present  year,  Professor  A.  S. 
Hardy,  of  Dartmouth,  is  reported  as  saying :  "  Every  educator 
now  recognizes  the  fact  that  individual  characteristics  are  always 
sufficiently  marked  to  demand  his  earliest  attention ;  and.  further- 
more, that  there  is  a  stage  in  the  process  of  education  where  the 
choice,  the  responsibility,  and  the  freedom  of  the  individual  should 
have  a  wide  scope."  President  Adams,  in  his  inaugural  address 
at  Cornell  last  year,  asserted  that  "  there  are  varieties  of  gifts, 
call  them,  if  you  will,  fundamental  differences,  that  make  it  im- 
possible to  train  successfully  all  of  a  group  of  boys  to  the  same 
standard.  These  differences  are  partly  matters  of  sheer  ability, 
and  partly  matters  of  taste ;  for  if  a  boy  has  so  great  an  aversion 
to  a  given  study  that  he  can  never  be  brought  to  apply  himself  to  it 
with  some  measure  of  fondness,  he  is  as  sure  not  to  succeed  in  it  as 
he  would  be  if  he  were  lacking  the  requisite  mental  capacity." 1 

In  determining,  then,  what  the  new  education  may  wisely  be, 
let  this  be  considered  settled  :  it  must  contain  a  large  element  of 
election.  That  is  the  opinion  of  these  unbiased  judges.  They  find 
personal  choice  necessary  for  promoting  a  wider  range  of  topics 
in  the  college,  a  greater  zeal  on  the  part  of  the  student,  and  more 
suitable  relations  between  teacher  and  pupil.  With  this  judg- 
ment I,  of  course,  heartily  agree,  though  I  should  make  more 
prominent  the  moral  reason  of  the  facts.  I  should  insist  that  a 
right  character  and  temper  in  the  receiving  mind  is  always  a  pre- 

1  These  conditions  of  intellectual  nourishment  were  long  ago  recognized  in 
other,  less  formal,  departments  of  mental  training.  In  his  essays  on  Books 
and  Reading  President  Porter  wrote  in  1871  :  "The  person  who  asks,  What 
shall  I  read  ?  or,  With  what  shall  I  begin  ?  may  have  read  for  years  in  a  me- 
chanical routine,  and  with  a  listless  spirit;  with  scarcely  an  independent  thought, 
with  no  plans  of  self-improvement,  and  few  aspirations  for  self-culture.  To 
all  these  classes  the  advice  is  full  of  meaning  :  '  Read  what  will  satisfy  your 
wants  and  appease  your  desires,  and  you  will  comply  with  the  first  condition  to 
reading  with  interest  and  profit.'  Hunger  and  thirst  are  better  than  manifold 
appliances  and  directions,  in  respect  to  other  than  the  bodily  wants,  towards  a 
good  appetite  and  a  healthy  digestion.  If  a  man  has  any  self-knowledge  or 
any  power  of  self-direction,  he  is  surely  competent  to  ask  himself  what  is  the 
subject  or  subjects  in  respect  to  which  he  stands  most  in  need  of  knowledge  or 
excitement  from  books.  If  he  can  answer  this  question,  he  has  gone  very  far 
towards  answering  the  question,  '  What  book  or  books  can  I  read  with  satisfac- 
tion and  profit  ? '  "  (Ch.  iv.,  p.  39.) 


I 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  7 

requisite  of  worthy  study.  But  I  misrepresent  these  gentlemen 
if  I  allow  their  testimony  to  stop  here.  They  maintain  that  the 
elective  principle  as  thus  far  carried  out,  though  valuable,  is  still 
meagre  and  one-sided.  They  do  not  think  it  will  be  found  self- 
sufficing  and  capable  of  guarding  its  own  working.  They  see 
that  it  has  dangers  peculiar  to  itself,  and  believe  that  to  escape 
them  it  will  require  to  be  restricted  and  furnished  with  supple- 
mental influences.  I  believe  so  too.  Choice  is  important,  but  it 
is  also  important  that  one  should  choose  well.  The  individual  is 
sacred,  but  only  so  far  as  he  is  capable  of  recognizing  the  sacred- 
ness  of  laws  which  he  has  had  no  part  in  making.  Unrestricted 
arbitrary  choice  is  indistinguishable  from  chaos  ;  and  undoubt- 
edly every  method  of  training  which  avoids  mechanism  and  in- 
cludes choice  as  a  factor  leaves  a  door  open  in  the  direction  of 
chaos.  Infinite  Wisdom  left  that  door  open  when  man  was  created. 
To  dangers  from  this  source  I  am  fully  alive.  I  totally  dissent 
from  those  advocates  of  the  elective  system  who  would  identify  it 
with  a  laissez  faire  policy.  The  cry  that  we  must  let  nature  take 
care  of  itself  is  a  familiar  one  in  trade,  in  art,  in  medicine,  in  social 
relations,  in  the  religious  life,  in  education ;  but  in  the  long  run  it 
always  proves  inadequate.  Man  is  a  personal  spirit,  a  director,  a 
being  fitted  to  compare  and  to  organize  forces,  not  to  take  them  as 
they  rise,  like  a  creature  of  nature.  The  future  will  certainly  not 
tolerate  an  education  less  organic  than  that  of  the  past ;  but  just 
as  certainly  will  it  demand  that  the  organic  tie  shall  be  a  living 
one,  —  one  whose  bond  may  assist  those  whom  it  restricts  to  become 
spontaneous,  forcible,  and  diverse.  If  I  am  offered  only  the  alter-  - 
native  of  absolutism  or  laissez  faire,  I  choose  laissez  faire.  Out 
of  chaotic  nature  beautiful  forms  do  continually  proceed.  But 
absolutism  kills  in  the  cradle.  It  cannot  tolerate  a  life  that  is 
imperfect,  and  so  it  stifles  what  it  should  nourish. 

Up  to  this  point  my  critics  and  I  have  walked  hand  in  hand. 
Henceforth  we  part  company.  I  shall  not  follow  out  all  our  little 
divergences.  My  object  from  the  first  has  been  to  trace  the  line 
along  which  the  new  education  may  now  proceed.  It  must,  it 
seems,  be  a  line  including  election  ;  but  election  limited  how  ?  To 
disentangle  an  answer  to  this  vexed  question,  I  pass  by  the  many 
points  in  which  my  critics  have  shown  that  I  am  foolish,  and 
the  few  others  in  which  I  might  show  them  so,  and  turn  to  the 
fundamental  issue  between  us,  our  judgment  of  what  the  supple- 
mental influences  are  which  will  render  personal  initiative  safe. 
Personal  initiative  is  assured.  The  authoritative  utterances  I  have 


8  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

just  quoted  show  that  it  can  never  again  be  expelled  from  Amer- 
ican colleges.  But  what  checks  are  compatible  with  it?  Ac- 
cepting choice,  what  treatment  will  render  it  continually  wiser  ? 
Here  differences  of  judgment  begin  to  appear,  and  here  I  had 
hoped  to  receive  much  light  from  my  critics.  The  question  is 
one  where  cooperative  experience  is  essential.  But  those  who 
have  written  against  me  seem  hardly  to  have  realized  its  impor- 
tance. They  generally  confine  themselves  to  showing  how  bad  my 
plans  are,  and  merely  hint  at  better  ones  which  they  themselves 
might  offer.  But  what  are  these  plans  ?  Wise  ways  of  training 
boys  are  of  more  consequence  than  Harvard  misdeeds.  We  want 
to  hear  of  a  constructive  policy  which  can  take  a  young  man  of 
nineteen  and  so  train  him  in  self-direction  that  four  years  later  he 
may  venture  out  alone  into  a  perplexing,  and  for  the  most  part 
hostile,  world.  The  thing  to  be  done  is  to  teach  boys  how  to 
manage  themselves.  Admit  that  the  Harvard  discipline  does  not 
do  this  perfectly  at  present ;  what  will  do  it  better  ?  Here  we 
are  at  an  educational  crisis.  We  stand  with  this  aim  of  self- 
guidance  in  our  hands.  What  are  we  going  to  do  with  it  ?  It  is 
as  dangerous  as  a  bomb.  But  we  cannot  drop  it.  It  is  too  late 
to  objurgate.  It  is  better  to  think  calmly  what  possible  modes  of 
treatment  are  still  open.  When  railroads  were  found  dangerous, 
men  did  not  take  to  stage-coaches  again ;  they  only  studied  rail- 
roading the  more. 

Now  in  the  mass  of  negative  criticism  which  the  last  year  has 
produced  I  detect  three  positive  suggestions,  three  ways  in  which 
it  is  thought  limitation  may  be  usefully  applied  to  supplement  the 
inevitable  personal  initiative.  These  modes  of  limitation,  it  is  true, 
are  not  worked  out  with  any  fullness  of  practical  detail,  as  if  their 
advocates  were  convinced  that  the  future  was  with  them.  Rather 
they  are  thrown  out  as  hints  of  what  might  be  desirable  if  facts 
and  the  public  would  not  interfere.  But  as  they  seem  to  be  the 
only  conceivable  modes  of  restricting  the  elective  principle  by  any 
species  of  outside  checkage,  I  propose  to  devote  the  remainder  of 
this  paper  to  an  examination  of  their  feasibility.  In  a  subsequent 
paper  I  shall  indicate  what  sort  of  corrective  appears  to  me  more 
likely  to  prove  congruous  and  lasting. 

The  first  suggestion  is  that  the  elective  principle  should  be 
limited  from  beneath.  Universities  and  schools  are  to  advance 
their  grade,  so  that  finally  the  universities  will  secure  three  or  four 
years  of  purely  elective  study,  while  the  schools,  in  addition  to 
their  present  labors,  will  take  charge  of  the  studies  formerly  pre- 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  9 

scribed  by  the  college.  The  schools,  in  short,  are  to  become  Ger- 
man Gymnasia,  and  the  colleges  to  delay  becoming  universities 
until  this  regeneration  of  the  schools  is  accomplished.1  A  certain 
"  sum  of  topics  "  is  said  to  be  essential  to  the  culture  of  the  man 
and  the  citizen.  In  the  interest  of  church  and  state,  young 
minds  must  be  provided  with  certain  "  fact  forms,"  with  a  "  com- 
mon consciousness,"  a  "  common  basis  of  humanism."  Impor- 
tant as  personal  election  is,  to  allow  it  to  take  place  before  this 
common  basis  is  laid  is  "  to  strike  a  blow  at  the  historic  substance 
of  civilization."  How  extensive  this  common  consciousness  is  to 
be  may  be  learned  from  Professor  Howison's  remark  that  "  lan- 
guages, classical  and  modern  ;  mathematics,  in  "all  its  general  con- 
ceptions, thoroughly  apprehended;  physics,  acquired  in  a  similar 
manner,  and  the  other  natural  sciences,  though  with  much  less  of 
detail ;  history  and  politics  ;  literature,  especially  of  the  mother 
tongue,  but,  indispensably,  the  masterpieces  in  other  languages, 
particularly  the  classic ;  philosophy,  in  the  thorough  elements  of 
psychology,  logic,  metaphysics,  and  ethics,  each  historically 
treated,  and  economics,  in  the  history  of  elementary  principles, 
must  all  enter  into  any  education  that  can  claim  to  be  liberal." 

The  practical  objections  to  this  monarchical  scheme  are  many. 
I  call  attention  to  three  only. 

In  the  first  place,  the  argument  on  which  it  is  based  proves  too 
much.  If  we  suppose  a  common  consciousness  to  be  a  matter  of 
such  importance,  and  that  it  cannot  be  secured  except  by  sameness 
of  studies,  then  that  State  is  criminally  careless  which  allows 
ninety-nine  hundredths  of  its  members  to  get  an  individual  con- 

1  In  deference  to  certain  writers  I  employ  their  favorite  term  "university  "  in 
contrast  with  the  term  "  college,"  yet  I  must  own  I  do  not  know  what  it  means. 
An  old  signification  was  clear.  A  university  was  an  assemblage  of  schools,  as 
our  government  is  an  assemblage  of  States.  In  England,  different  corpora- 
tions, giving  substantially  similar  instruction,  are  brought  together  by  a  com- 
mon body  which  confers  the  degrees.  In  this  country,  a  group  of  professional 
schools  —  law,  medicine,  theology,  and  science  —  are  associated  through  one 
governing  body  with  the  college  proper,  that  is,  with  the  candidates  for  the 
B.  A.  degree.  In  this  useful  sense,  Tufts  and  Bowdoin  are  universities  ;  Am- 
herst  and  Brown,  colleges.  But  Germany,  which  has  thrown  so  many  parts  of 
the  world  into  confusion,  has  introduced  exaltation  and  mystery  here.  A  uni- 
versity now  appears  to  mean  "  a  college  as  good  as  it  can  be,"  a  stimulating 
conception,  but  not  a  finished  or  precise  one.  I  would  not  disparage  it.  It  is 
a  term  of  aspiration,  good  to  conjure  with.  When  we  want  to  elevate  men's 
ideas,  or  to  obtain  their  dollars,  it  is  well  to  talk  about  creating  a  true  univer- 
sity: just  as  it  is  wise  to  bid  the  forward-reaching  boy  to  become  "a  true 
gentleman." 


10         Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

sciousness  by  the  simple  expedient  of  never  entering  college.  The 
theory  seems  to  demand  that  every  male  —  and  why  not  female  ? 
—  between  sixteen  and  twenty  be  indoctrinated  in  "  the  essential 
subject  matters,"  without  regard  to  what  he  or  she  may  personally 
need  to  know  or  do.  This  is  the  plan  of  the  Romish  Church, 
which  enforces  its  "  fact  forms  "  of  doctrine  on  all  alike ;  without 
securing,  however,  by  this  means,  according  to  the  judgment 
of  the  outside  world,  any  special  freshness  of  religious  life.  I 
do  not  believe  the  results  would  be  better  in  the  higher  secular 
culture,  and  I  should  be  sorry  to  see  Romish  methods  applied 
there  ;  but  if  they  are  to  be  applied,  let  them  fall  impartially  on 
all  members  of  the  community.  To  put  into  swaddling  clothes 
the  man  who  is  wise  enough  to  seek  an  education,  and  to  leave 
his  duller  brother  to  kick  about  as  he  pleases,  seems  a  little 
arbitrary. 

But  secondly,  there  is  no  more  prospect  of  persuading  our  high 
schools  to  accept  the  prescribed  subjects  of  the  colleges  than  there 
is  of  persuading  our  government  to  transform  itself  into  the  Ger- 
man. Already  the  high  schools  and  the  colleges  are  unhappily 
drawing  apart.  The  only  hope  of  their  nearer  approach  is  in  the 
remission  by  the  colleges  of  some  of  the  more  burdensome  sub- 
jects at  present  exacted.  Paid  for  by  common  taxation,  these 
schools  are  called  on  to  equip  the  common  man  for  his  daily 
struggle.  That  they  will  one  day  devote  themselves  to  laying  the 
foundations  of  an  ideally  best  education  for  men  of  leisure  is 
grotesquely  improbable.  Although  Harvard  draws  rather  more 
than  one  third  of  her  students  from  States  outside  New  England, 
the  whole  number  of  students  who  have  come  to  her  from  the 
high  schools  of  these  States,  during  a  period  of  the  last  ten 
years,  is  but  sixty-six.  Fitting  for  college  is  becoming  an  alarm- 
ingly technical  matter,  and  is  falling  largely  into  the  hands  of 
private  tutors  and  academies. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  thirdly,  that  it  is  just  these  academies 
which  might  advantageously  take  the  present  freshman  and 
sophomore  studies.  They  would  thus  become  the  exclusive  ave- 
nues to  the  university  of  the  future,  leaving  it  free  to  do  its  own 
proper  work  with  elective  studies.  Considering  the  great  ex- 
pense which  this  lengthening  of  the  curriculum  of  the  academy 
implies,  it  is  plain  that  the  number  of  schools  capable  of  fitting 
boys  in  this  way  would  always  be  small.  These  few  academies, 
with  their  monopoly  of  learned  training,  would  lose  their  present 
character  and  be  erected  into  little  colleges,  —  colleges  of  a  second 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  11 

grade.  That  any  such  thing  is  likely  to  occur,  I  do  not  believe  ; 
but  if  it  were,  would  it  aid  the  higher  education  and  promote 
its  wide  dispersion  ?  Precisely  the  contrary.  Instead  of  going 
to  the  university  from  these  academies,  boys  would  content  them- 
selves with  the  tolerable  education  already  received.  For  the 
most  part  they  would  decline  to  go  farther.  It  is  useless  to  say 
that  this  does  not  happen  in  Germany,  where  the  numbers  resort- 
ing to  the  university  are  so  large  as  to  have  become  the  subject 
of  complaint ;  for  the  German  government,  controlling  as  it  does 
all  access  to  the  profession^,  is  able  to  force  through  the  Gymnasia 
and  through  special  courses  at  the  university  a  body  of  young 
men  who  would  otherwise  be  seeking  their  fortunes  elsewhere. 
Whether  such  control  would  be  desirable  in  this  country,  I  will 
not  consider.  Some  questions  are  not  feasible  even  for  discussion. 
But  it  is  to  English  experience  we  must  look  to  see  what  our  case 
would  be.  The  great  public  schools  of  England  —  Eton,  Rugby, 
Harrow,  Winchester,  Westminster,  Cheltenham  —  are  of  no  higher 
order  than  under  the  proposed  plan  Andover  and  Exeter  would 
become.  From  these  two  academies  nearly  ninety-five  per  cent,  of 
the  senior  classes  now  enter  some  college.  But  of  the  young  men 
graduating  from  the  English  schools  named,  so  far  as  I  can  ascer- 
tain, less  than  fifty  per  cent,  go  to  the  university.  With  the  greater 
pressure  toward  commercial  life  in  this  country,  the  number  would 
certainly  be  less  than  in  England.  To  build  up  colleges  of  a  second 
grade,  and  to  permit  none  but  those  who  have  passed  them  to  enter 
colleges  of  the  first,  is  to  cut  off  the  higher  education  from  nearly 
all  those  who  do  not  belong  to  the  privileged  classes  ;  it  is  to  make 
the  "  common  consciousness  "  less  common,  and  to  turn  it,  even 
more  effectually  than  at  present,  into  the  consciousness  of  a  clique. 
He  who  must  make  a  living  for  himself  or  for  others  cannot  afford 
to  reach  his  profession  late.  The  age  of  entering  college  is  already 
too  high.  With  improved  methods  of  teaching  I  hope  it  may  be 
somewhat  reduced.  At  any  rate,  every  study  now  added  to  the 
high  schools  or  academies  is  a  fresh  barrier  between  education 
and  the  people. 

If,  then,  by  prescribing  a  large  amount  of  study  outside  the 
university  the  elective  principle  is  not  likely  to  be  successfully 
limited,  is  it  not  probable  that  within  the  college  itself  the  two 
counter  principles  of  election  and  prescription,  mutually  limiting, 
mutually  supporting,  will  always  be  retained  ?  This  is  the  second 
suggestion  ;  to  bring  studies  of  choice  and  studies  commanded 
into  juxtaposition.  The  backbone  of  the  college  is  to  be  kept 


12         Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

prescribed,  the  fleshy  parts  to  be  made  elective.  By  a  special 
modification  of  the  plan,  the  later  years  are  turned  largely,  per- 
haps wholly,  toward  election,  and  a  line  is  drawn  at  the  junior,  or 
even  the  sophomore  year,  below  which  elective  studies  are  for- 
bidden to  penetrate.  Is  not  this  the  plan  that  will  finally  be 
judged  safest  ?  It  certainly  is  the  safest  for  a  certain  number  of 
years.  Before  it  can  securely  reach  anything  else,  every  college 
must  pass  through  this  intermediate  state.  After  half  a  century 
of  testing  election,  Harvard  still  retains  some  prescribed  studies. 
The  Harvard  juniors  chose  for  nineteen  years  before  the  sopho- 
mores, and  the  sophomores  seventeen  years  before  the  freshmen. 
In  introducing  electives  a  sober  pace  is  commendable.  A  uni- 
versity is  charged  with  the  greatest  of  public  trusts.  The  intel- 
ligence of  the  community  is,  to  a  large  extent,  in  its  keeping.  It 
is  bound  to  keep  away  from  risky  experiments,  to  disregard  shift- 
ing popular  fancies,  and  to  be  as  conservative  as  clearness  of  sight 
will  permit.  I  do  not  plead,  therefore,  that  Harvard  and  Yale 
should  abolish  all  prescription  the  coming  year.  They  certainly 
should  not.  In  my  opinion,  most  colleges  have  moved  too  fast  in 
the  elective  direction  already.  I  merely  plead  that  we  must  see 
where  we  are  going.  As  public  guides,  we  must  forecast  the  track 
of  the  future  if  we  would  avoid  stumbling  into  paths  which  lead 
nowhere.  That  is  all  I  am  attempting  here.  I  want  to  ascertain 
whether  the  dual  system  of  limitation  is  a  stable  system,  one  in 
which  we  can  put  our  trust,  or  whether  it  is  a  temporary  conven- 
ience, likely  to  slip  away  a  little  year  after  year.  What  does  his- 
tory say  ?  Let  us  examine  the  facts  of  the  past.  The  following 
table  shows  at  the  left  the  fifteen  New  England  colleges.  In  the 
next  three  parallel  columns  is  printed  the  percentage  of  elective 
studies  which  existed  in  these  colleges  in  1875-76  ;  in  the  last 
three,  the  percentage  which  exists  to-day.  To  render  the  com- 
parison more  exact,  I  print  the  sophomore,  junior,  and  senior  years 
separately,  reserving  the  problem  of  the  freshman  year  for  later 
discussion.1 

1  It  is  impossible  to  show  in  this  table  the  range  of  choice,  that  is,  the  number 
of  studies  between  which  a  man's  selection  lies.  I  wish  I  could  warrant  minute 
accuracy  in  regard  to  the  point  which  it  professes  to  show.  Great  pains  have 
been  spent  upon  it.  Its  statements  have  been  reported  to  me  by  an  officer  of 
the  college  named,  and  this  report  has  been  subsequently  verified  by  catalogue. 
But  only  those  who  have  had  much  experience  with  statistics  know  how  un- 
veracious  figures  can  be. 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

1875-76.  1885-86. 


13 


Soph. 

Juu. 

Sen. 

Soph. 

Jim. 

Sen. 

.04 

.20 

.08 

.20 

.75 

.75 

Bates     

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

Boston                       

0 

0 

0 

.35 

.66 

.82 

0 

0 

0 

.15 

.25 

.25 

0 

.04 

.04 

.14 

.37 

.55 

Colby     .                    

0 

0 

0 

0 

.08 

.16 

0 

0 

0 

0 

.41 

.36 

Harvard.                               .     •     . 

.50 

.78 

1.00 

100 

1.00 

1.00 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

Trinity  

0 

0 

0 

0 

.25 

.25 

Tufts      

0 

.17 

.17 

0 

.28 

.43 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

^^esleyan                                      • 

0 

.47 

.47 

.16 

.47 

.64 

Williams     

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

.37 

Yale       

0 

0 

0 

.13 

.53 

.80 

This  table  yields  four  conclusions :  (1.)  A  rapid  and  fateful 
revolution  is  going  on  in  the  higher  education  of  New  England. 
We  do  not  exaggerate  the  change  when  we  speak  of  an  old  educa- 
tion and  a  new.  (2.)  The  spread  of  it  is  in  tolerable  proportion 
to  the  wealth  of  the  college  concerned.  The  new  modes  are  ex- 
pensive. It  is  not  disapproval  which  is  holding  the  colleges  back ; 
it  is  inability  to  meet  the  cost.  I  am  sorry  to  point  out  this  fact. 
To  my  mind  one  of  the  gravest  perplexities  of  the  new  education 
is  the  query,  what  are  the  small  colleges  to  do  ?  They  have  a 
usefulness  altogether  peculiar;  yet  from  the  life-giving  modern 
methods  of  training  they  are  of  necessity  largely  cut  off.  (3.) 
The  colleges  which  long  ago  foresaw  their  coming  necessities  have 
been  able  to  proceed  more  cautiously  than  those  which  acknowl- 
edged them  late.  (4.)  The  movement  is  one  of  steady  advance. 
There  is  no  going  back.  It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  the 
stablest  colleges  have  been  proceeding  with  these  changes  many 
more  years  than  the  period  shown  in  the  table.  Are  we,  then,  pre- 
pared to  dismiss  prejudice  from  our  minds  and  to  recognize  what 
steadiness  of  advance  means  ?  In  other  matters  when  a  general 
tendency  in  a  given  direction  is  discovered,  extending  over  a  long 
series  of  years,  visible  in  individuals  widely  unlike,  and  present- 
ing no  solitary  case  of  backward  turning,  we  are  apt  to  conclude 
that  there  is  a  force  in  the  movement  which  will  carry  it  still 
further  onward.  We  are  not  disposed  to  seize  on  some  point  in 
its  path  and  to  count  that  an  ultimate  holding-ground.  This,  I 
say,  would  be  a  natural  conclusion  unless  we  could  detect  in  the 


14         Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

movement  tendencies  at  work  in  an  opposite  direction.  Are  there 
any  such  tendencies  here?  I  cannot  find  them.  Prescription  in- 
variably loses  ;  election  invariably  gains. 

But  in  order  to  make  a  rational  prediction  about  the  future  we 
must  know  more  than  the  bare  facts  of  the  past ;  we  need  to 
know  why  these  particular  facts  have  arisen.  What  are  the 
reasons  that  whenever  elective  and  prescribed  studies  are  mixed, 
an  extrusive  force  regularly  appears  in  the  elective  ?  The  reasons 
are  not  far  to  seek.  Probably  every  professor  in  New  England 
understands  them.  The  two  systems  are  so  incongruous  that  each 
brings  out  the  vices  rather  than  the  virtues  of  its  incompatible 
brother.  Prescribed  studies,  side  by  side  with  elective,  appear  a 
bondage;  elective,  side  by  side  with  prescribed,  an  indulgence. 
So  long  as  all  studies  are  prescribed,  one  may  be  set  above  another 
in  the  mind  of  the  pupil  on  grounds  of  intrinsic  worth ;  let  cer- 
tain studies  express  the  pupil's  wishes,  and  almost  certainly  the 
remainder,  valuable  as  they  may  be  in  themselves,  will  express  his 
disesteem.  It  is  useless  to  say  this  should  not  be  so.  It  always  is. 
The  zeal  of  work,  the  freshness  of  interest,  which  now  appear  in 
the  chosen  studies,  are  deducted  from  those  which  are  forced.  On 
the  latter  as  little  labor  as  possible  is  expended.  They  become 
perfunctory  and  mechanical,  and  soon  restive  pupils  and  dis- 
satisfied teachers  call  for  fresh  extension  of  energizing  choice. 
This  is  why  the  younger  officers  in  all  the  colleges  are  eager  to 
give  increased  scope  to  the  elective  studies.  They  cannot  any 
longer  get  first-rate  work  done  in  the  prescribed.  Alarmed  by 
the  dangers  of  the  new  principle,  as  they  often  and  justly  are, 
they  find  that  the  presence  of  prescription,  instead  of  diminishing 
the  dangers,  adds  another  and  a  peculiarly  enfeebling  one  to  those 
which  existed  before.  So  certain  are  these  dangers,  and  so  inevita- 
ble the  expanding  power  of  the  elective  principle,  that  it  is  question- 
able whether  it  would  not  be  wiser  for  a  college  to  refuse  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  elective  studies  so  soon  as  it  knows  itself  too 
weak  to  allow  them  to  spread. 

For  where  will  this  spreading  stop?  It  cannot  stop  till  the 
causes  of  it  stop.  The  table  just  given  shows  no  likelihood  of  its 
stopping  at  all,  and  a  little  reflection  will  show  that  each  enlarge- 
ment increases  the  reasons  for  another  enlargement  still.  If  pre- 
scribed studies  are  ever  exceptional,  ineffective,  and  obnoxious, 
they  certainly  become  more  so  as  they  diminish  in  number.  A 
college  which  retains  one  of  them  is  in  a  condition  of  unstable 
equilibrium.  But  is  this  true  of  the  freshman  year  ?  Will  not  a 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  15 

special  class  of  considerations  keep  prescription  enduring  and  in- 
fluential there,  long  after  it  has  lost  its  usefulness  in  the  later 
years  ?  A  boy  of  nineteen  comes  from  home  about  as  untrained 
in  will  as  in  intelligence.  Will  it  not  always  be  thought  best  to 
give  him  a  year  in  which  to  acquaint  himself  with  his  surround- 
ings and  to  learn  what  studies  he  may  afterwards  profitably  select  ? 
Possibly  it  will.  I  incline  to  think  not.  The  case  of  the  fresh- 
man year  is  undoubtedly  peculiar.  Taking  a  large  body  of  col- 
leges, we  have  direct  evidence  that  during  their  last  three  years 
the  elective  principle  steadily  wins  and  never  loses.  We  have  but 
a  trifle  of  such  evidence  as  regards  the  freshman  year.  There  the 
struggle  of  the  two  forces  has  barely  begun.  It  has  begun  at 
Harvard,  and  the  usual  result  is  already  foreshadowed.  The  pre- 
scribed studies  are  disparaged  studies ;  they  are  not  worked  at  the 
best  advantage.  Still,  I  do  not  like  to  prophesy  on  evidence  so 
narrow.  I  will  merely  say  I  see  no  reason  to  suppose  that  colleges 
will  meet  with  permanent  success  in  mingling  incompatible  kinds 
of  study  in  their  freshman  year.  But  I  can  only  surmise.  Let 
any  college  that  inclines  to  try  the  experiment  do  so. 

It  may  be  thought,  however,  a  wiser  course  to  keep  the  fresh- 
man year  untouched  by  choice.  A  solid  year  of  prescription  is 
thus  secured  as  a  limitation  on  the  election  that  is  to  follow.  This 
plan  is  so  often  advised,  especially  by  persons  unacquainted  with 
the  practical  working  of  colleges,  that  it  requires  a  brief  exami- 
nation by  itself. 

Let  us  suppose  the  revolution  which  we  have  traced  in  the 
sophomore,  junior,  and  senior  years  to  have  reached  its  natural 
terminus  ;  let  us  suppose  that  in  these  years  all  studies  have  be- 
come elective,  while  the  freshman  year  remains  completely  pre- 
scribed ;  the  college  will  then  fall  into  two  parts,  a  preparatory 
department  and  a  university  department.  In  these  two  depart- 
ments the  character  of  the  instruction,  the  methods  of  study,  the 
consciousness  of  the  students,  will  be  altogether  dissimilar.  The 
freshmen  will  not  be  taken  by  upper  classmen  as  companions ; 
they  will  be  looked  down  upon  as  children.  Hazing  will  find 
abundant  excuse.  An  abrupt  line  will  be  drawn,  on  whose  far- 
ther side  freedom  will  lie,  on  whose  hither  side,  bondage.  The 
sophomore,  a  being  who  at  best  has  his  peculiarities,  will  find 
his  sense  of  self-sufficiency  doubled.  Whatever  badly-bred  boy 
parents  incline  to  send  to  college  will  seem  to  them  safe  enough 
for  a  year,  and  they  will  suppose  that  during  this  period  he  will 
learn  how  to  behave.  Of  course  he  will  learn  nothing  of  the  sort. 


16        Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

Manly  discipline  has  not  yet  begun.  At  the  end  of  the  freshman 
year  a  boy  will  be  only  so  much  less  a  boy  as  increase  of  age  may 
make  him.  Through  being  forced  to  study  mathematics  this  year 
there  comes  no  sustaining  influence  fitted  to  fortify  the  judgment 
when  one  is  called  the  next  year  to  choose  between  Greek  and 
German.  On  the  contrary,  the  change  from  school  methods  to 
maturing  methods  is  rendered  as  dangerous  as  possible  by  allow- 
ing it  to  take  place  quite  nakedly,  by  itself,  unsupported  by  other 
changes,  and  at  the  mere  dictation  of  the  almanac.  An  emanci- 
pation so  bare  and  sudden  is  not  usual  elsewhere.  For  boys  who 
do  not  go  to  college,  departure  from  home  is  commonly  recog- 
nized as  a  fit  occasion  for  putting  on  that  dangerous  garment,  the 
toga  virilis.  Entrance  to  the  university  constitutes  a  similar 
epoch,  when  change  of  residence,  new  companions,  altered  con- 
ditions of  living,  a  realization  that  the  old  supports  are  gone, 
and  the  presumption  with  which  every  one  now  meets  the  youth 
that  he  is  to  be  treated  as  a  man  among  men,  become  helpful  in- 
fluences cooperating  to  ease  the  hard  and  inevitable  transition 
from  parental  control  to  personal  self -direction.  A  safer  time 
for  beginning  individual  responsibility  cannot  be  found.  At  any 
rate,  whether  my  diagnosis  of  reasons  is  correct  or  not,  the  fact  is 
clear,  —  self-respecting  colleges  do  not  tolerate  preparatory  de- 
partments. They  dp  not  work  well.  They  are  an  element  of 
weakness  in  the  institution  which  harbors  them.  Even  where  at 
first  they  are  judged  necessary,  so  soon  as  the  college  grows  strong 
they  are  dropped.  When  we  attempt  to  plan  an  education  for 
times  to  come,  we  must  bear  in  mind  established  facts.  Turn  the 
freshman  year  into  a  preparatory  department,  fill  it  with  studies 
antithetic  in  aim,  method,  and  spirit  to  those  of  later  years,  and 
something  is  established  which  no  sober  college  has  ever  permitted 
to  remain  long  within  its  borders.  This  is  the  teaching  of  the  past 
without  an  exception.  To  suppose  the  future  will  be  different  is 
but  the  blind  hope  of  a  timid  transitionalism. 

The  third  suggestion  for  restricting  election  is  the  group  sys- 
tem. This  deserves  a  more  respectful  treatment  than  the  methods 
hitherto  discussed,  for  it  is  something  more  than  a  suggestion  :  it 
is  a  system,  a  constructive  plan  of  education,  thought  out  in  all 
its  parts,  and  directed  toward  an  intended  end.  The  definition 
which  I  have  elsewhere  offered  of  the  elective  system,  that  it  de- 
mands a  fixed  quantity  and  quality  of  study  with  variable  topic, 
would  be  applicable  also  to  the  group  system.  Accordingly  it  be- 
longs to  the  new  education  rather  than  to  the  old.  No  less  than 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  17 

the  elective  system  it  is  opposed  to  the  methods  of  restriction  thus 
far  described.  These  latter  methods  attempt  to  limit  election  by 
the  ballast  of  an  alien  principle  lodged  beneath  it  or  by  its  side. 
They  put  a  weight  of  prescription  into  the  preparatory  schools, 
into  the  early  college  years,  or  into  parallel  lines  of  study  extend- 
ing throughout  the  college  course.  The  source  of  their  prac-  \ 
tical  trouble  lies  here :  the  two  principles  —  election  and  prescrip-  I'" 
tion  —  are  nowhere  united ;  they  remain  sundered  and  at  war, J 
unserviceable  for  each  other's  defects.  The  group  system  inter- 
twines them.  It  permits  choice  in  everything,  but  at  the  same 
time  prescribes  everything.  This  it  effects  by  enlarging  the  unit 
of  choice  and  prescribing  its  constituent  factors.  A  group  or 
block  of  studies  is  offered  for  choice,  not  a  single  study.  All  the 
studies  of  a  group  must  be  taken  if  any  are,  the  "  if  "  being  the 
only  matter  left  for  the  student  to  settle.  The  group  may  include 
all  the  studies  open  to  a  student  at  the  university.  One  decision 
may  determine  his  entire  course.  Or,  as  in  the  somewhat  anal- 
ogous arrangement  of  the  English  universities,  one  group  may  be 
selected  at  the  beginning  and  another  in  the  middle  of  the  univer- 
sity life.  The  group  itself  is  sometimes  contrived  so  as  to  allow 
an  individual  variation ;  different  students  read  different  books ; 
a  special  phase  of  philosophy,  history,  or  science  receives  promi- 
nence. But  the  boundaries  of  the  group  cannot  be  crossed.  All 
the  studies  selected  by  the  college  authorities  to  form  a  single 
group  must  be  taken ;  no  others  can  be. 

In  this  method  of  limiting  choice  there  is  much  that  is  attrac- 
tive. I  feel  that  attraction  strongly.  Under  the  exceptional  con- 
ditions which  exist  at  Johns  Hopkins  University,  a  group  system 
has  done  excellent  work.  Like  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  I  honor 
that  work  and  admire  its  wise  directors.  But  group  systems 
seem  to  me  to  possess  features  too  objectionable  to  permit  them 
to  become  the  prevalent  type  of  the  future,  and  I  do  not  see 
how  these  features  can  be  removed  without  abandoning  what  is 
distinctive,  and  changing  the  whole  plan  into  the  elective  system, 
pure  and  simple.  The  objectionable  features  connect  themselves 
with  the  size  of  the  unit  of  choice,  with  difficulties  in  the  con- 
struction of  the  groups,  and  with  the  attempt  to  enforce  specializa- 
tion. But  these  are  enigmatic  phrases ;  let  me  explain  them. 

Obviously,  for  the  young,  foresight  is  a  hard  matter.  While 
disciplining  them  in  the  intricate  art  of  looking  ahead,  I  should 
think  it  wise  to  furnish  frequently  a  means  of  repairing  errors. 
Penalties  for  bad  choices  should  not  be  too  severe.  Now  plainly 

VOL.  vi.  — NO.  36.  38 


18        Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

the  larger  the  unit  of  choice,  the  graver  the  consequences  of 
erroneous  judgment.  The  group  system  takes  a  large  unit,  a 
body  of  studies;  the  simple  elective  system,  a  small  unit,  the 
single  study.  Errors  of  choice  are  consequently  less  reparable 
under  the  group  system  than  under  pure  election.  To  meet 
this  difficulty  the  college  course  at  Baltimore  has  been  reduced 
from  four  years  to  three ;  but  even  so,  a  student  who  selects  a 
group  for  which  he  finds  himself  unfit  cannot  bring  himself  into 
proper  adjustment  without  the  loss  of  a  year.  If  he  does  not  dis- 
cover his  unfitness  until  the  second  year  has  begun,  he  loses  two 
years.  Under  the  elective  system,  the  largest  possible  penalty  for 
a  single  mistake  is  the  loss  of  a  single  study,  one  quarter  of  a 
year's  work.  This  necessary  difference  in  ease  of  reparability  ap- 
pears to  me  to  mark  an  inferiority  in  group  systems,  considered  as 
methods  of  educating  choice.  To  the  public  it  may  seem  other- 
wise. I  am  often  astonished  to  find  people  approving  irreparable 
choices  and  condemning  reparable  ones.  That  youths  between 
nineteen  and  twenty-three  should  select  studies  for  themselves 
shocks  many  people  who  look  kindly  enough  on  marriages  con- 
tracted during  those  years.  Boys  still  unbearded  have  a  large 
share  in  deciding  whether  they  will  go  to  college,  to  a  scientific 
school,  to  a  store,  to  sea,  or  to  a  cattle-ranch.  Their  lives  are 
staked  on  the  wisdom  of  the  step  taken.  Yet  the  American  mode 
of  meeting  these  family  problems  seems  to  our  community,  on  the 
whole,  safer  than  the  English  way  of  regulating  them  by  tradition 
and  dictation.  The  choice  with  heavy  stakes  of  the  boy  who  does 
not  go  to  college  is  frequently  set  off  favorably  against  the  choices 
with  light  stakes  of  the  boy  who  goes.  Perhaps  a  similarly  lenient 
judgment  will  in  the  long  run  be  passed  on  the  great  stakes  in- 
volved in  group  systems.  I  doubt  it.  I  think  it  will  ultimately 
be  judged  less  dangerous  and  more  maturing  to  grant  a  young 
man,  in  his  passage  through  a  period  of  moral  discipline,  frequent 
opportunities  of  repair. 

Again,  the  practical  difficulties  of  deciding  what  groups  shall  be 
formed  are  enormous.  What  studies  shall  enter  into  each  ?  How 
many  groups  shall  there  be?  If  but  one,  we  have  the  old-fash- 
ioned college  with  no  election.  If  two,  we  have  the  plan  which 
Yale  has  just  abandoned,  a  fixed  undergraduate  department  main- 
tained in  parallel  vigor  with  a  fixed  scientific  school.  But  in  con- 
ceding the  claims  of  variety  even  to  this  degree,  we  have  treated 
the  fundamental  differences  between  man  and  man  as  worthy,  not 
reprehensible ;  and  can  we  say  that  the  proper  differences  are  only 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  19 

two  ?  Must  we  not  acknowledge  a  world  at  least  as  complex  as 
that  they  have  in  Baltimore,  where  there  appear  to  be  seven  repu- 
table species  of  mankind :  "  those  who  wish  a  good  classical  train- 
ing; those  who  look  toward  a  course  in  medicine;  those  who 
prefer  mathematical  studies  with  reference  to  engineering,  astron- 
omy, and  teaching ;  those  who  wish  an  education  in  scientific 
studies,  not  having  chosen  a  specialty ;  those  who  expect  to  pur- 
sue a  course  in  theology ;  those  who  propose  to  study  law  ;  those 
who  wish  a  literary  training  not  rigidly  classical."  1  Here  a  clas- 
sification of  human  wishes  is  attempted,  but  one  suspects  that 
there  are  legitimate  wishes  which  lie  outside  the  scheme.  It  does 
not,  for  example,  at  once  appear  why  a  prospective  chemist  should 
be  debarred  from  all  regular  study  of  mathematics,  or  a  prospective 
lawyer  from  Latin.  It  seems  hard  that  a  youth  of  literary  tastes 
should  be  cut  off  from  Greek  at  entrance  unless  he  will  agree  to 
take  five  exercises  in  it  each  week  throughout  his  college  course. 
One  does  not  feel  quite  easy  in  allowing  nobody  but  a  lawyer  or  a 
devotee  of  modern  languages  to  read  a  page  of  English  or  Amer- 
ican history.2  The  Johns  Hopkins  programme  is  the  most  in- 
genious and  the  most  flexible  contrivance  for  working  a  group 
system  that  I  have  ever  seen.  For  this  reason  I  mention  it  as  the 
most  favorable  type  of  all.  Considering  its  purposes,  I  do  not 
believe  it  can  be  much  improved.  As  applied  to  its  little  band  of 
students — 116 — it  certainly  works  few  hardships.  Yet  all  the 
exclusions  I  have  named,  and  many  more  besides,  appear  in  it.  I 
instance  these  simply  to  show  what  barriers  to  knowledge  the  best 
group  system  erects.  Remove  these,  and  others  quite  as  great  are 
introduced.  Try  to  avoid  them  by  allowing  the  student  of  one 
group  to  take  certain  studies  in  another,  and  the  sole  line  which 
parts  the  group  system  from  the  elective  is  abandoned.  In  prac- 
tice, it  usually  is  abandoned.  Confronted  with  the  exigencies  of 
operation,  the  so-called  group  system  turns  into  an  elective  sys- 
tem, with  highly  specialized  lines  of  study  strongly  recommended. 
With  this  more  genial  working  I  have  nothing  now  to  do.  My 
point  is  this  :  a  system  of  hard  and  fast  groups  presents  difficulties 
of  construction  and  maintenance  too  great  to  recommend  it  to  the 
average  college  of  the  future  as  the  best  mode  of  limiting  the 
elective  principle. 

Probably,  however,  this  difficulty  will  be  chiefly  felt  by  persons 
engaged  in  the  actual  work  of  educational  organization.     It  will 

1  Andover  Review,  June,  1886,  p.  572. 

2  See  the  Johns  Hopkins  University  Register,  pp.  47-53. 


20        Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

not  be  observed  by  the  "  walking  delegate,"  who  from  a  position 
in  the  outer  world  tells  college  people  from  time  to  time  what 
they  had  better  do.  That  gentleman  will  find  the  objection  more 
serious  that  grouped  colleges  are  in  reality  professional  schools 
carried  down  to  the  limits  of  boyhood.  So  far  as  they  hold 
by  their  groups,  they  are  nurseries  of  specialization.  That  this 
is  necessarily  so  may  not  at  first  be  apparent.  A  little  con- 
sideration of  the  contrast  in  aim  between  group  systems  and  pre- 
scribed will  make  the  matter  plain.  Prescribed  systems  have 
gained  their  long  hold  on  popular  confidence  by  aiming  at  har- 
monious culture.  They  argue,  justly  enough,  that  each  separate 
sort  of  knowledge  furnishes  something  of  its  own  to  the  making 
of  a  man.  This  particular  "  something,"  they  say,  can  be  had 
from  no  other  source.  The  sum  of  these  "somethings  "  constitutes 
a  rounded  whole.  The  man  who  has  not  experienced  each  of 
them  in  some  degree,  however  small,  is  imperfectly  planned. 
One  who  has  been  touched  by  all  has  laid  the  foundations  of  a 
liberal  education.  Degree  of  acquaintance  with  this  subject  or 
with  that  may  subsequently  enlarge.  Scholarly  interest  may  con- 
centrate. But  at  the  first,  the  proper  aim  is  balanced  knowledge, 
harmonious  development  of  all  essential  powers,  avoidance  of  one- 
sidedness. 

On  this  aim  the  group  system  bestows  but  a  secondary  atten- 
tion. Eegarding  primarily  studies,  not  men,  it  attempts  to  organ- 
ize single  connected  departments  of  knowledge.  Accordingly  it 
permits  only  those  studies  to  be  pursued  together  which  imme- 
diately cohere.  It  lays  out  five,  ten,  any  number  of  paths  through 
the  field  of  knowledge,  and  to  one  of  these  paths  the  pilgrim  is 
confined.  Each  group  constitutes  a  specialty,  —  a  specialty  inten- 
sified in  character  as,  in  order  to  escape  the  difficulties  of  main- 
tenance just  pointed  out,  the  number  of  groups  is  allowed  to 
increase.  By  insistence  on  specialization  regard  for  general  cul- 
ture is  driven  into  a  subordinate  place.  The  advocates  of  pre- 
scription maintain  that  there  are  not  half  a  dozen  ground-plans 
of  perfected  humanity.  They  say  there  is  but  one.  If  we  intro- 
duce variety  of  design  into  a  curriculum,  we  neglect  that  ideal 
man  who  resides  alike  in  all.  We  trust,  on  the  contrary,  in  our 
power  to  hit  some  line  of  study  which  may  deservedly  appeal  to 
one  human  being  while  not  so  appealing  to  another.  We  simply 
note  the  studies  which  are  most  congruous  with  the  special  line 
selected,  and  by  this  congruity  we  shape  our  group.  In  the  new 
aim,  congruity  of  studies  takes  precedence  of  harmonious  develop- 
ment of  powers. 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  21 

I  have  no  doubt  that  specialization  is  destined  to  become  more 
marked  in  the  American  education  of  the  future.  It  must  be- 
come so  if  we  are  to  produce  the  strong  departmental  scholars 
who  illuminate  learning  in  other  countries  ;  indeed,  it  must  become 
so  if  we  are  to  train  competent  experts  for  the  affairs  of  daily  life. 
The  popular  distrust  of  specializing  is  sure  to  grow  less  as  our 
people  become  familiar  with  its  effects  and  see  how  often  narrow 
and  thorough  study,  undertaken  in  early  life,  leads  to  ultimate 
breadth.  It  is  a  pretty  dream  that  a  man  may  start  broad  and 
then  concentrate,  but  nine  out  of  every  ten  strong  men  have  taken 
the  opposite  course.  They  have  begun  in  some  one-sided  way, 
and  have  added  other  sides  as  occasion  required.  Almost  in  his 
teens  Shakespeare  makes  a  specialty  of  the  theatre,  Napoleon  of 
military  science,  Beethoven  of  music,  Hunter  of  medicine,  Hugh 
Miller  of  rocks,  Faraday  of  chemistry,  Hamilton  of  political  sci- 
ence. The  great  body  of  painters,  musicians,  poets,  novelists, 
theologians,  politicians,  are  early  specialists.  In  fact,  self-made 
men  are  generally  specialists.  Something  has  aroused  an  interest, 
and  they  have  followed  it  out  until  they  have  surveyed  a  wide 
horizon  from  a  single  point  of  view.  In  offering  wider  oppor- 
tunities for  specialization,  colleges  have  merely  been  assimilating 
their  own  modes  of  training  to  those  which  prevail  in  the  world 
at  large. 

It  does  not,  therefore,  seem  to  me  objectionable  that  group  sys- 
tems set  a  high  value  on  specialization.  That  is  what  every  man 
does,  and  every  clear-eyed  college  must  do  it  too.  What  I  object 
to  is  that  group  systems,  so  far  as  they  adhere  to  their  aim,  en- 
force specialization.  Among  every  half  dozen  students,  probably 
one  will  be  injured  if  he  cannot  specialize  largely;  two  or  three 
more  might  wisely  specialize  in  lower  degree.  But  to  force  the 
remaining  two  or  three  into  curricula  shaped  by  professional  bias 
is  to  do  them  serious  damage.  There  are  sober  boys  of  little  in- 
trepidity or  positive  taste,  boys  who  properly  enough  wish  to  know 
what  others  know.  They  will  not  make  scholars.  They  were  not 
born  to  enlarge  the  boundaries  of  knowledge.  They  have  another 
function  :  they  preserve  and  distribute  such  knowledge  as  already 
exists.  Many  of  them  are  persons  of  wealth.  To  furnish  them 
glimpses  of  varied  learning  is  to  save  them  from  barbarism. 
Still  another  large  class  is  composed  of  boys  who  develop  late. 
They  are  boys  who  will  one  day  acquire  an  interest  of  their  own, 
if  they  are  allowed  to  roam  about  somewhat  aimlessly  in  the 
domain  of  wisdom  until  they  are  twenty-one.  Both  of  these 


22  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

classes  have  their  rights.  The  prescribed  system  was  built  to  sup- 
port them ;  the  elective  shelters  and  improves  them  ;  but  a  group 
system  shuts  them  all  out,  if  they  will  not  on  leaving  school  adopt 
professional  courses.  Whenever  I  can  hear  of  a  group  system 
which  like  the  old  college  has  a  place  for  the  indistinct  young 
man,  and  like  the  new  elective  college  matures  him  annually  by 
suggesting  that  he  take  part  in  shaping  his  own  career,  I  will  ac- 
cept the  group  system.  Then,  too,  the  public  will  probably  accept 
it.  Until  then,  rigid  groups  will  be  thought  by  many  to  lay  too 
great  a  strain  on  unseasoned  powers  of  choice,  to  present  too  many 
practical  difficulties  of  construction,  and  to  show  too  doctrinaire  a 
confidence  that  every  youth  will  fit  without  pinching  into  a  special- 
ized class. 

G.  H.  Palmer. 
CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 


POSSIBLE  LIMITATIONS  OF  THE 
ELECTIVE  SYSTEM. 

n. 

BY  G.  H.  PALMEE. 

[REPRINTED  PROM  THE  ANDOVER  REVIEW  FOR  JANUARY,  1887.] 


POSSIBLE  LIMITATIONS  OF  THE  ELECTIVE 
SYSTEM.1 

II. 

THE  preceding  paper  has  sufficiently  discussed  the  impossible 
limitations  of  the  elective  system,  and  has  shown  with  some  mi- 
nuteness the  grounds  of  their  impossibility.  The  methods  there 
examined  are  the  only  ones  suggested  by  my  critics.  They  all 
agree  in  this,  that  they  seek  to  narrow  the  scope  of  choice.  They 
try  to  combine  with  it  a  hostile  factor,  and  they  differ  merely  in 
their  mode  of  combination.  The  first  puts  a  restraining  check  be- 
fore election ;  the  second  puts  one  by  its  side ;  the  third  makes  the 
two  inseparable  by  allowing  nothing  to  be  chosen  which  is  not  first 
prescribed.  The  general  purpose  of  all  these  methods  is  mine 
-  also.  Election  must  be  limited.  Unchartered  choice  is  licentious 
and  self-destructive.  I  quarrel  with  them  only  because  the  modes 
of  effecting  their  purpose  tend  to  produce  results  of  a  transient  and 
inappropriate  sort.  The  aim  of  education,  as  I  conceive  it,  is  to 
spiritualize  the  largest  possible  number  of  persons,  that  is,  to  teach 
them  how  to  do  their  own  thinking  and  willing,  and  to  do  it  well. 
But  these  methods  effect  something  widely  different.  They  either 
aristocratize  where  they  should  democratize,  or  they  belittle  where 
they  should  mature,  or  else  they  professionalize  where  they  should 
humanize.  A  common  trouble  besets  them  all :  the  limiting  au- 
thority is  placed  in  external  and  arbitrary  juxtaposition  to  the 
personal  initiative  which  it  professes  to  support.  It  should  grow 
out  of  this  initiative  and  be  its  interpreter  and  realization.  By 
limitation  of  choice  the  proposers  of  these  schemes  appear  to  mean 

1  This  article  closes  the  discussion  introduced  by  Professor  Palmer  in  the 
November  number  (1885)  of  the  Review,  and  is  the  final  answer  of  the  author 
to  his  critics.  —  ED. 

Copyright,  1887,  by  HOUQHTON,  MOTLIN  &  Co. 


2  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

making  choice  less.  I  mean  fortifying  it,  keeping  it  true  to  itself, 
making  it  more.  Control  that  diminishes  the  quantity  of  choice 
is  one  thing ;  control  that  raises  the  quality,  quite  another.  How 
important  is  this  distinction  and  how  frequently  it  is  forgotten ! 
Words  like  "limitation,"  "control,"  "authority,"  "obedience," 
are  words  of  majesty,  but  words  also  of  doubtful  import.  They 
carry  a  freight  of  wisdom  or  of  folly,  according  to  the  end  to- 
wards which  they  steer.  In  order  to  sanction  or  discard  limita- 
tions which  induce  obedience,  we  must  bear  that  end  in  mind. 
Let  us  stop  a  moment,  and  see  that  we  have  it  in  mind  now. 

Old  educational  systems  are  often  said  to  have  erred  by  excess 
of  authority.  I  could  not  say  so.  The  elective  system,  if  it  is  to 
possess  the  future,  must  become  as  authoritative  as  they.  More  ac- 
curately we  say  that  their  authority  was  of  a  wrong  sort.  A  father 
may  exercise  an  authority  over  his  child  no  less  directive  than  that 
of  the  master  over  the  slave ;  but  the  father  is  trying  to  accomplish 
something  which  the  master  disregards ;  the  father  hopes  to  make 
the  will  of  another  strong,  the  master  to  make  it  weak ;  the  father 
commands  what  the  child  himself  would  wish,  had  he  sufficient 
experience.  The  child's  obedience  accordingly  enlightens,  steadies, 
invigorates  his  independent  will.  Invigoration  is  the  purpose  of 
the  command.  The  authority  is  akin  —  secretly  akin  —  to  the 
child's  own  desires.  No  alien  power  intervenes,  as  when  a  slave 
obeys.  Here  a  foreign  will  thwarts  the  slave's  proper  motions. 
Over  against  his  own  legitimate  desires,  the  desire  of  a  totally 
different  being  appears  and  claims  precedence.  Obedience  like 
this  brings  no  ennoblement.  The  oftener  a  child  obeys,  the  less 
of  a  child  is  he ;  the  oftener  a  slave,  the  more  completely  he  is 
a  slave.  Roughly  to  say,  then,  that  submission  to  authority  is 
healthy  for  a  college  boy  argues  a  mental  confusion.  There  are 
two  kinds  of  authority,  —  the  authority  of  moral  guidance,  and  the  * 
authority  of  repressive  control ;  parental  authority,  respecting  and 
vivifying  the  individual  life  and  thus  continually  tending  to  su- 
persede itself,  and  masterly  authority,  whose  command,  out  of 
relation  to  the  obeyer's  wish,  tends  ever  to  bring  the  obedient  into 
bondage.  Which  shall  college  authority  be  ?  Authority  is  nec- 
essary, ever-present  authority.  If  the  young  man's  choice  is  to 
become  a  thing  of  worth,  it  must  be  encompassed  with  limitations. 
But  as  the  need  of  these  limitations  springs  from  the  imperfections 
of  choice,  so  should  their  aim  be  to  perfect  choice,  not  to  repress  it. 
To  impose  limitations  which  do  not  ultimately  enlarge  the  youth 
they  bind  is  to  make  the  means  of  education  "  oblige  against  its 
main  end." 


Q1I 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  3 

This  moral  authority  is  what  the  new  education  seeks.  To  a 
casual  eye,  the  colleges  of  to-day  seem  to  be  growing  disorganized ; 
a  closer  view  shows  construction  taking  place,  but  taking  place 
along  the  lines  of  the  vital  distinction  just  pointed  out.  Men  are 
striving  to  bring  about  a  germane  and  ethical  authority  in  the 
room  of  the  baser  mechanical  authorities  of  the  past.  Here,  then, 
is  a  clue  which,  if  followed  up,  will  lead  us  away  from  impossi- 
ble limitations  of  the  elective  system,  and  conduct  us  at  length  to 
the  possible,  nay,  to  the  inevitable  ones.  As  the  elective  principle 
is  essentially  ethical,  its  limitations,  if  helpfully  congruous,  must 
be  ethical  too.  They  must  be  simply  the  means  of  bringing  home 
to  the  young  chooser  the  sacred  conditions  of  choice,  which  condi- 
tions, if  I  rightly  understand  them,  may  compactly  be  entitled  those 
of  intentionality,  information,  and  persistence.  To  secure  these 
conditions,  limitations  exist.  In  the  very  nature  of  choice,  such 
conditions  are  implied.  Choice  is  sound  as  they  prevail,  whimsi- 
cal as  they  diminish.  An  education  which  lays  stress  on  the  elec- 
tive principle  is  bound  to  lay  stress  on  these  conditions  also.  It 
cannot  slip  over  into  lazy  ways  of  letting  its  students  drift,  and 
still  look  for  credit  as  an  elective  system.  People  will  distrust  it. 
That  is  why  they  distrust  Harvard  to-day.  The  objections  brought 
against  the  elective  system  of  Harvard  are  in  reality  not  leveled 
against  the  elective  system  at  all.  They  are  directed  against  its 
bastard  brother,  laissez-faire.  Objectors  suspect  that  the  condi- 
tions of  choice  which  I  have  named  are  not  fulfilled.  They  are 
not  fulfilled,  I  confess,  or  rather  I  stoutly  maintain.  To  come  any- 
where near  fulfilling  them  requires  long  time  and  study,  and  action 
unmpeded  by  a  misconceiving  community.  Both  time  and  study 
Harvard  has  given,  —  has  given  largely.  The  records  of  scholar- 
ship and  deportment  which  I  exhibited  a  year  ago  show  in  how 
high  a  degree  Harvard  has  already  reached  those  conditions  which 
remove  from  choice  the  capricious,  ignorant,  and  unsteadfast  char- 
acteristics which  rightly  bring  it  into  disrepute.  But  much  re- 
mains to  do,  and  in  that  doing  we  are  hampered  by  the  fact  that 
a  portion  of  the  public  is  still  looking  in  wrong  directions.  It 
cannot  get  over  its  hankering  after  the  delusive  modes  of  limita- 
tion which  I  have  discussed.  It  does  not  persistently  see  that  at 
present  the  proper  work  of  education  is  the  study  of  means  by 
which  self-direction  may  be  rendered  safe.  Leaders  of  education 
themselves  see  this  but  dimly,  as  the  papers  of  my  critics  naively 
show.  Until  choice  was  frankly  accepted  as  the  fit  basis  for  the 
direction  of  a  person  by  a  person,  its  fortifying  limitations  could 


4  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

not  be  studied.  Now  they  must  be  studied,  now  that  the  old  meth- 
ods of  autocratic  control  are  breaking  down.  As  a  moral  will 
comes  to  be  recognized  as  the  best  sort  of  steam  power,  the  modes 
of  generating  that  power  acquire  new  claims  to  attention.  Hence- 
forth the  training  of  the  will  must  be  undertaken  by  the  elective 
system  as  an  integral  part  of  its  discipline. 

I  am  not  so  presumptuous  as  to  attempt  to  prophesy  the  pre- 
cise forms  which  methods  of  moral  guidance  will  ultimately  take. 
Moral  guidance  is  a  delicate  affair.  Its  spirit  is  more  important 
than  its  procedure.  Flexibility  is  its  strength.  Methods  final, 
rigid,  and  minute  do  not  belong  to  it.  Nor  can  it  afford  to  forget 
the  one  great  truth  of  laissez-faire,  that  wills  which  are  to  be  kept 
fresh  and  vigorous  will  not  bear  much  looking  after.  Time,  too, 
is  an  important  factor  in  the  shaping  of  moral  influences.  Ex- 
periments now  in  progress  at  Harvard  and  elsewhere  must  dis- 
criminate safe  from  unsafe  limitations.  Leaving  then  to  the 
future  the  task  of  showing  how  wide  the  scope  of  maturing  disci- 
pline may  become,  I  will  merely  try  to  sketch  the  main  lines 
along  which  experiments  are  now  proceeding,  I  will  give  a  few 
illustrative  examples  of  what  is  being  done  and  why,  and  I  will 
state  somewhat  at  large  how,  in  my  judgment,  more  is  yet  to  be 
accomplished.  To  make  the  matter  clear  a  free  exposition  shall 
be  given  of  the  puzzling  headings  already  named ;  that  is,  I  will 
first  ramblingly  discuss  the  limitations  on  choice  which  may  deepen 
the  student's  intentionality  of  aim ;  secondly,  those  which  increase 
his  information  in  regard  to  means ;  and  thirdly,  those  which  may 
strengthen  his  persistence  in  a  course  once  chosen. 

That  intentionality  should  be  cultivated,  I  need  not  spend  many 
words  in  explaining.  All  acknowledge  that  without  a  certain 
degree  of  it  choice  is  impossible.  Many  assert  also  that  boys  come 
to  college  with  no  clear  intentions,  not  knowing  what  they  want, 
waiting  to  be  told ;  for  such,  it  is  said,  an  elective  system  is  mani- 
festly absurd.  I  admit  the  fact.  It  is  true.  The  majority  of  the 
freshmen  whom  I  have  known  in  the  last  seventeen  years  have 
been,  at  entrance,  deficient  in  serious  aims.  But  from  this  fact  I 
draw  a  conclusion  quite  opposite  to  the  one  suggested.  It  is  elec- 
tion, systematized  election,  which  these  boys  need.  For  when  we 
say  a  young  student  has  no  definite  aims,  we  imply  that  he  has 
never  become  sufficiently  interested  in  any  given  intellectual  line 
to  have  acquired  the  wish  to  follow  that  line  farther.  Such  a  state 
of  things  is  lamentable,  and  certainly  shows  that  prescribed  meth- 
ods —  the  proper  methods,  in  my  judgment,  for  the  school  years 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  5 

—  have  proved  inadequate.  It  is  useless  to  continue  them  into 
years  confessedly  less  suited  to  their  exercise.  Perhaps  it  is  about 
equally  useless  to  abandon  the  ill-formed  boy  to  unguided  choice. 
Prescription  says,  "  This  person  is  unfit  to  choose,  keep  him  so ; " 
laissez-faire  says,  "  If  he  is  unfit  to  choose,  let  him  perish ; "  but 
a  watchful  elective  system  must  say,  "  Granting  him  to  be  unfit, 
if  he  is  not  spoiled,  I  will  fit  him."  And  can  we  fit  him  ?  I 
know  well  enough  that  indifferent  teachers  incline  to  shirk  the 
task.  They  like  to  divide  pupils  into  the  deceptive  classes  of 
good  and  bad,  meaning  by  the  former  those  who  intend  to  work, 
and  by  the  latter  those  who  intend  not  to.  But  we  must  get  rid 
of  indifferent  teachers.  Teachers  with  enthusiasm  in  them  soon 
discover  that  the  two  classes  of  pupils  I  have  named  may  as  well 
be  dismissed  from  consideration.  Where  aims  have  become  defi- 
nite, a  teacher  has  little  more  to  do.  The  boy  who  means  to  work 
will  get  learning  under  the  poorest  teacher  and  the  worst  system ; 
while  the  boy  who  means  not  to  work  may  be  forced  up  to  the  Pie- 
rian spring,  but  will  hardly  be  made  to  drink.  A  vigorous  teacher 
does  not  assume  intention  to  be  ready-made.  He  counts  it  his 
continual  office  to  help  in  making  it.  On  the  middle  two  quarters 
of  a  class  he  spends  his  hardest  efforts,  on  students  who  are  friendly 
to  learning  but  not  impassioned  for  it,  on  those  who  like  the  re- 
sults of  study  but  like  tennis  also,  and  popularity,  and  cigars,  and 
slackness.  The  culture  of  these  weak  wills  is  the  problem  of 
every  college.  Here  are  unintentional  boys  waiting  to  be  turned 
into  intentional  men.  What  limitations  on  intellectual  and  moral 
vagrancy  will  help  them  forward  ? 

The  chief  limitation,  the  one  underlying  all  others,  the  one 
which  no  clever  contrivance  can  ever  supersede,  is  vitalized  teach- 
ing. Suitable  subjects,  attractively  taught,  awake  lethargic  inten- 
tion as  nothing  else  can.  An  elective  system,  as  even  its  enemies 
confess,  enormously  stimulates  the  zeal  of  teachers.  It  conse- 
quently brings  to  bear  on  unawakened  boys  influences  of  a 
strangely  quickening  character.  When  I  hear  a  man  trained 
under  the  old  methods  of  prescription  say,  "  At  the  time  I  was  in 
college  I  could  not  have  chosen  studies  for  myself,  and  I  do  not 
believe  my  son  can,"  I  see,  and  am  not  surprised  to  see,  that  he 
does  not  understand  what  forces  the  elective  system  sets  astir. 
So  powerful  an  influence  have  these  forces  over  both  teachers  and 
pupils,  that  questions  of  hard  and  easy  studies  do  not,  as  outsiders 
are  apt  to  suppose,  seriously  disturb  the  formation  of  sound  inten- 
tions. The  many  leaders  in  education  whose  opinions  on  election 


6  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

I  quoted  in  my  previous  paper  agree  that  the  new  modes  tend  to 
sobriety  and  intentionality  of  aim.  When  Professor  Ladd  speaks 
of  "  the  unexpected  wisdom  and  manliness  of  the  choices  already 
made "  in  the  first  year  of  election  at  New  Haven,  he  well  ex- 
presses the  gratified  surprise  which  every  one  experiences  on  per- 
ceiving for  the  first  time  that  planted  in  the  very  constitution  of 
the  elective  system  there  is  a  sort  of  limitation  on  wayward  choice. 
This  limitation  seems  to  me,  as  Professor  Ladd  says  he  found  it,1 
a  tolerable  preventive  of  choices  directly  aimed  at  ease.  In  a 
community  devoted  to  athletics,  base  ball  is  not  played  because  it 
is  "  soft,"  and  foot-ball  avoided  on  account  of  its  difficulty.  A 
similar  state  of  things  must  be  brought  about  in  studies.  In  a 
certain  low  degree  it  has  come  about  already.  As  election  breeds 
new  life  in  teaching,  the  old  slovenly  habit  of  liking  best  what 
costs  least  begins  to  disappear.  Easy  courses  will  exist  and  ought 
to  exist.  Prescribed  colleges,  it  is  often  forgotten,  have  more  of 
them  than  elective  colleges.  The  important  matter  is,  that  they 
fall  to  the  right  persons.  Where  everything  is  prescribed,  stu- 
dents who  do  not  wish  easy  studies  are  still  obliged  to  take  them. 
Under  election,  soft  courses  may  often  be  pursued  with  advantage. 
A  student  whose  other  courses  largely  depend  for  their  profit  on 
the  amount  of  private  reading  or  of  laboratory  practice  accom- 
plished in  connection  with  them  is  wise  in  choosing  one  or  more 
in  which  the  bulk  of  the  work  is  taken  by  the  teacher.  I  do  not 
say  that  soft  courses  are  always  selected  with  these  wise  aims  in 
view.  Many  I  know  are  not.  We  have  our  proper  share  of  hard- 
ened loafers  —  "  tares  in  our  sustaining  corn  "  —  who  have  an  un- 
erring instinct  as  to  where  they  can  most  safely  settle.  But  large 
numbers  of  the  men  in  soft  courses  are  there  to  good  purpose,  and 
I  maintain  that  the  superficial  study  of  a  subject,  acquainting  one 
with  broad  outlines,  is  not  necessarily  a  worthless  study.  At  Har- 
vard to-day  I  believe  we  have  too  few  such  superficial  courses.  As 
I  look  over  the  Elective  Pamphlet,  and  note  the  necessarily  vary- 
ing degrees  of  difficulty  in  the  studies  announced  there,  I  count 
but  six  which  can,  with  any  justice,  be  entitled  soft  courses  ;  and 
several  of  these  must  be  reckoned  by  anybody  an  inspiration  to 
the  students  who  pursue  them.  There  is  a  tendency  in  the  elective 

1  "  Doubtless  some  have  carried  out  the  intention  of  making  everything  as 
soft  as  possible  for  themselves.  But  the  choices,  in  fact,  do  not  as  yet  show 
the  existence  of  any  such  intention  in  any  considerable  number  of  cases  ;  they 
show  rather  the  very  reverse."  —  Professor  Ladd  in  The  New  Englander,  Jan- 
uary, 1885,  p.  119. 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  7 

system,  as  I  have  shown  elsewhere,  to  reduce  the  number  of  soft 
courses  somewhat  below  the  desirable  number. 

I  insist,  therefore,  that  under  a  pretty  loose  elective  system  boys 
are  little  disposed  to  intentionally  vicious  choices.  My  fears  look 
in  a  different  direction.  I  do  not  expect  depravity,  but  I  want  to 
head  off  aimless  trifling.  I  agree  with  the  opponents  of  election 
in  thinking  that  there  is  danger,  especially  during  the  early  years 
of  college  life,  that  righteous  intention  may  not  be  distinct  and 
energetic.  Boys  drift.  Inadequate  influences  induce  their  de- 
cisions. The  inclinations  of  the  clique  in  which  a  young  man 
finds  himself  are,  without  much  thought,  accepted  as  his  own. 
Heedlessness  is  the  young  man's  bane.  It  should  not  be  mistaken 
for  vice.  The  two  are  different.  A  boy  who  will  enter  a  dormi- 
tory at  twelve  o'clock  at  night,  and  go  to  the  third  story  whistling 
and  beating  time  on  the  banisters,  certainly  seems  a  brutish 
person  ;  but  he  is  ordinarily  a  kind  enough  fellow,  capable  of  a 
good  deal  of  self-sacrifice  when  brought  face  to  face  with  need. 
He  simply  does  not  think.  So  it  is  in  study :  there,  too,  he  does 
not  think.  Now  in  college  a  boy  should  learn  perpetually  to 
think ;  and  an  excellent  way  of  helping  him  to  learn  is  to  ask 
him  often  what  he  is  thinking  about.  The  object  of  the  question- 
ing should  not  be  to  thwart  the  boy's  aims,  rather  to  insure  that 
these  are  in  reality  his  own.  Essentially  his  to  the  last  they 
should  remain,  even  though  they  may  not  be  intrinsically  the  best. 
Young  persons,  much  more  than  their  elders,  require  to  talk  over 
plans  from  time  to  time  with  an  experienced  critic,  in  order  to 
learn  by  degrees  the  difficult  art  of  planning.  By  such  talk 
intentionality  is  fortified.  There  is  much  of  this  talk  already; 
talk  of  younger  students  with  older,  talk  with  wise  persons  at 
home,  and  more  and  more  every  year  with  the  teachers  of  the 
courses  left  and  the  courses  entered.  All  this  is  good.  Hap- 
hazard modes  breed  an  astonishing  average  of  choices  that  possess 
a  meaning.  The  waste  of  a  laissez-faire  system  comes  nowhere 
near  the  waste  of  a  prescribed.  But  what  is  good  when  compared 
with  a  bad  thing  may  be  poor  when  compared  with  excellence  itself. 
"We  must  go  on.  A  college,  like  a  man,  must  always  be  saying, 
"  Never  was  I  so  good  as  to-day,  and  never  again  will  I  be  so  bad." 
We  must  welcome  criticisms  more  than  praises,  and  seek  after 
our  weak  points  as  after  hid  treasures.  The  elective  system  seems 
to  me  weak  at  present  through  lacking  organized  means  of  bring- 
ing the  student  and  his  intentions  face  to  face.  Intentions  grow 
by  being  looked  at.  At  the  English  universities  a  young  man 


8  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

on  entering  a  college  is  put  in  charge  of  a  special  tutor,  without 
whose  consent  he  can  do  little  either  in  the  way  of  study  or  of 
personal  management.1  Dependence  so  extreme  is  perhaps  better 
suited  to  an  infant  school  than  to  an  American  college ;  and  even 
in  England,  where  respectful  subservience  on  the  part  of  the  young 
has  been  cultivated  for  generations,  the  system  is  losing  ground. 
Since  the  tutors  were  allowed  to  marry  and  to  leave  the  college 
home,  tutorial  influence  has  been  changing.  In  most  American 
colleges  twenty-five  years  ago  there  were  officers  known  as  class 
tutors,  to  whom,  in  case  of  need,  a  student  might  turn.  Petty 
permissions  were  received  from  these  men,  instead  of  from  a  me- 
chanical central  office.  So  far  as  this  plan  set  personal  supervision 
in  the  place  of  routine  it  was,  in  my  eyes,  good.  But  the  relation 
of  a  class  tutor  to  his  boys  was  usually  one  of  more  awe  than 
friendship.  At  Johns  Hopkins  University  a  board  of  advisers 
has  been  instituted,  to  some  member  of  which  each  student  is 
assigned  at  entrance.  The  adviser  is  to  stand  in  loco  parentis  to 
his  charges.  The  value  of  such  adjustments  depends  on  the  nature 
of  the  parental  tie.  If  the  relation  is  worked  so  as  to  stimulate 
the  student's  independence,  it  is  good';  if  so  as  to  discharge  him 
from  responsibility,  it  unfits  for  the  life  that  is  to  follow.  At 
Harvard  special  students  not  candidates  for  a  degree  have  re- 
cently been  put  in  charge  of  a  committee,  to  whom  they  are 
obliged  to  report  their  previous  history  and  their  plans  of  study 
for  each  succeeding  year.  It  is  the  business  of  the  committee  to 
know  at  all  times  what  their  charges  are  doing.  Something  of 
this  sort,  I  am  convinced,  will  be  demanded  at  no  distant  day,  as  a 
means  of  steadying  all  students  in  elective  colleges.  Large  per- 
sonal supervision  need  not  mean  diminution  of  freedom.  A  young 
man  may  possess  his  freedom  more  solidly  if  he  recognizes  an 
obligation  to  state  and  defend  the  reasons  which  induce  his  choice. 
For  myself,  I  should  be  willing  to  make  the  functions  of  such 
advisory  committees  somewhat  broad.  As  a  college  grows,  the  old 
ways  of  bringing  about  acquaintance  between  officers  and  students 
become  impracticable.  But  the  need  of  personal  acquaintance, 
unhappily,  does  not  cease.  New  ways  should  be  provided.  A 
boy  dropped  into  the  middle  of  a  large  college  must  not  be  lost  to 
sight.  He  must  be  looked  after.  To  allow  the  teacher's  work  of 

1  As  the  minute  personal  care  given  to  individual  students  in  the  English 
universities  is  often  and  deservedly  praised,  I  may  as  well  say  that  it  costs 
something.  Oxford  spends  each  year  about  $2,000,000  on  2,500  men;  Harvard, 
$650,000  on  1,700. 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  9 

instruction  to  become  divorced  from  his  pastoral,  his  priestly, 
function  is  to  cheapen  and  externalize  education.  I  would  have 
every  student  in  college  supplied  with  somebody  who  might  serve 
as  a  discretionary  friend :  and  I  should  not  think  it  a  disadvantage 
that  such  an  expectation  of  friendship  would  be  as  apt  to  better 
the  instructor  as  the  student. 

Before  leaving  this  part  of  my  subject,  I  may  mention  a  sub- 
ordinate, but  still  valuable,  means  of  limiting  choice  so  as  to 
increase  its  intentionality.  The  studies  open  to  choice  in  the 
early  years  should  be  few  and  elementary.  The  significance  of 
advanced  courses  cannot  be  understood  till  elementary  ones  are 
mastered,  and  immature  choice  should  not  be  confused  by  many 
issues.  At  Harvard  this  mode  of  limitation  is  largely  employed. 
Although  the  elective  list  for  1885-86  shows  172  courses,  a  fresh- 
man has  hardly  more  than  one  eighth  of  these  to  choose  from ;  in 
any  given  case  this  number  will  probably  be  reduced  about  one 
half  by  insufficient  preparation  or  conflict  of  hours.  Seemingly 
about  a  third  of  the  list  is  offered  to  the  average  sophomore  ;  but 
this  amount  is  again  cut  down  nearly  one  half  by  the  operation  of 
similar  causes.  The  practice  of  hedging  electives  with  qualifica- 
tions is  a  growing  one.  It  may  well  grow  more.  It  offers  guid- 
ance precisely  at  the  point  where  it  is  most  needed.  It  protects 
rational  choice,  and  guards  against  many  of  the  dangers  which 
the  foes  of  election  justly  dread. 

A  second  class  of  limitations  of  the  elective  system,  possible 
and  friendly,  springs  from  the  need  of  furnishing  the  young  elec- 
tor ample  information  about  that  which  he  is  to  choose.  The  best 
intentions  require  judicious  aim.  If  studies  are  taken  in  the 
dark,  without  right  anticipation  of  their  subject-matter,  or  in 
ignorance  of  their  relation  to  other  studies,  small  results  follow. 
Here,  I  think  it  will  be  generally  agreed,  prescribed  systems  are 
especially  weak.  Their  pupils  have  little  knowledge  beforehand 
of  what  a  course  is  designed  to  accomplish.  Work  is  undertaken 
blindly,  minds  consenting  as  little  as  wills.  An  elective  system 
is  impossible  under  such  conditions.  Its  student  must  know  when 
he  chooses,  what  he  chooses.  He  must  be  able  to  estimate  whether 
the  choice  of  Greek  5  will  further  his  designs  better  than  the 
choice  of  Greek  8. 

At  Harvard,  methods  of  furnishing  information  are  pretty  fully 
developed.  In  May  an  elective  pamphlet  is  issued,  which  an- 
nounces everything  that  is  to  be  taught  in  the  college  during  the 
following  year.  Most  departments,  also,  issue  additional  pamphlets, 


10  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Mective  System. 

describing  with  much  detail  the  nature  of  their  special  courses, 
and  the  considerations  which  should  lead  a  student  to  one  rather 
than  another.  If  the  courses  of  a  department  are  arranged  prop- 
erly, pursuing  one  gives  the  most  needful  knowledge  about  the 
available  next.  This  knowledge  is  generally  supplemented  at  the 
close  of  the  year  by  explanations  on  the  part  of  the  instructor 
about  the  courses  that  follow.  In  the  Elective  Pamphlet  a  star, 
prefixed  to  courses  of  an  advanced  and  specially  technical  char- 
acter, indicates  that  the  instructor  must  be  privately  consulted 
before  these  courses  can  be  chosen.  Consultations  with  instructors 
about  all  courses  are  frequent.  That  most  effective  means  of 
distributing  information,  the  talk  of  students,  goes  on  unceas- 
ingly. With  time,  perhaps,  means  may  be  devised  for  informing 
a  student  more  largely  what  he  is  choosing.  The  fullest  infor- 
mation is  desirable.  That  which  is  at  present  most  needed  is,  I 
think,  some  rough  indication  of  the  relations  of  the  several  prov- 
inces of  study  to  one  another.  Information  of  this  sort  is  pecul- 
iarly hard  to  supply,  because  the  knowledge  on  which  it  professes 
to  rest  cannot  be  precise  and  unimpeachable.  We  deal  here 
with  intricate  problems,  in  regard  to  which  experts  are  far  from 
agreed,  problems  where  the  different  point  of  view  provided  in  the 
nature  of  each  individual  will  rightly  readjust  whatever  general 
conclusions  are  drawn.  The  old  type  of  college  had  an  easy  way 
of  settling  these  troublesome  matters  dogmatically,  by  voting,  in 
open  faculty-meeting,  what  should  be  counted  the  normal  sequence 
of  studies,  and  what  their  mixture.  But  as  the  votes  of  different 
colleges  showed  no  uniformity,  people  have  gradually  come  to 
perceive  that  the  subject  is  one  where  only  large  outlines  can  dis- 
tinctly be  made  out.1  To  these  large  outlines  I  think  it  important 

1  I  may  not  have  a  better  opportunity  than  this  to  clear  up  a  petty  difficulty 
which  seems  to  agitate  some  of  my  critics.  They  say  they  want  the  degree  of 
A.  B.  to  mean  something  definite,  while  at  present,  under  the  elective  system, 
it  means  one  thing  for  John  Doe,  and  something  altogether  different  for  his 
classmate,  Kichard  Roe.  That  is  true.  Besides  embodying  the  general  signi- 
fication that  the  bearer  has  been  working  four  years  in  a  way  to  satisfy  college 
guardians,  the  stately  letters  do  take  on  an  individual  variation  of  meaning  for 
every  man  who  wins  them.  They  must  do  so  as  long  as  we  are  engaged  in  the 
formation  of  living  persons.  If  the  college  were  a  factory,  our  case  would  be 
different.  We  might  then  offer  a  label  which  would  keep  its  identity  of  meaning 
for  all  the  articles  turned  out.  Wherever  education  has  been  a  living  thing, 
the  single  degree  has  always  contained  this  element  of  variety.  The  German 
degree  is  as  diverse  in  meaning  as  ours.  The  degree  of  the  English  university 
is  diverse,  and  more  diverse  for  Honors  men  —  the  only  ones  who  can  properly 
be  said  to  deserve  it  — -  than  for  inert  Pass  men.  Degrees  in  this  country  have, 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  11 

to  direct  the  attention  of  undergraduates.  In  most  German  uni- 
versities a  course  of  "  Encyclopedic  "  is  offered,  a  course  which 
gives  in  brief  a  survey  of  the  sciences,  and  attempts  to  fix  ap- 
proximately the  place  of  each  in  the  total  organization  of  knowl- 
edge. I  am  not  aware  that  such  a  course  exists  in  any  American 
college.  Indeed,  there  was  hardly  a  place  for  it  till  dogmatic  pre- 
scription was  shaken.  But  if  something  of  the  kind  were  now  es- 
tablished in  the  freshman  year,  our  young  men  might  be  relieved 
of  a  certain  intellectual  short-sightedness,  and  the  choices  of  one 
year  might  better  keep  in  view  those  of  the  other  three. 

And  now  granting  that  a  student  has  started  with  good  inten- 
tions and  is  well  informed  about  the  direction  where  profit  lies,  still 
have  we  any  assurance  that  he  will  push  those  intentions  with  a 
fair  degree  of  tenacity  through  the  distractions  which  beset  his 
daily  path?  We  need,  indeed  we  must  have,  a  third  class  of 
helpful  limitations  which  may  be  influential  over  the  persistent 
adhesion  of  our  student  to  his  chosen  line  of  work.  Probably 
this  class  of  limitations  is  the  most  important  and  complex  of  all. 
To  yield  a  paying  return,  study  must  be  stuck  to.  A  decision  has 
little  meaning  unless  the  volition  of  to-day  brings  in  its  train  a 
volition  to-morrow.  Self-direction  implies  such  patient  continu- 
ance in  well-doing  that  only  after  persistence  has  become  somewhat 
habitual  can  choice  be  called  mature.  To  establish  onward -leading 
habits,  therefore,  should  be  one  of  the  chief  objects  in  devising 
limitations  of  election.  Only  we  must  not  mistake.  We  must 
look  below  the  surface.  Mechanical  diligence  often  covers  mental 
sloth.  It  is  not  habits  of  passive  docility  that  are  desirable, 
habits  of  timidity  and  uncriticising  acceptance.  Against  forming 
these  pernicious  and  easily  acquired  habits,  it  may  be  necessary 
even  to  erect  barriers.  The  habit  wanted  is  the  habit  of  spon- 
taneous attack.  Prescription  deadened  this  vital  habit.  It  mech- 
anized. His  task  removed,  the  student  had  little  independent  mo- 
mentum. Election  invigorates  the  springs  of  action.  Formerly  I 
did  not  see  this,  and  I  favored  prescribed  systems,  thinking  them 
systems  of  duty.  That  absence  of  an  aggressive  intellectual  life 

from  the  first,  had  considerable  diversity,  college  differing  from  college  in 
requirement,  and  certainly  student  from  student  in  attainment.  That  twenty- 
five  years  ago  we  were  approaching  too  great  uniformity  in  the  signification  of 
degrees,  I  suppose  most  educators  now  admit.  That  was  a  mechanical  and 
stagnant  period,  and  men  have  brought  over  from  it  to  the  more  active  days  of 
the  present  ideals  formed  then.  Precision  of  statement  goes  with  figures,  with 
etiquette,  with  military  matters  ;  but  descriptions  of  the  quality  of  persons 
must  be  stated  in  the  round. 


12          Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

which  prescribed  studies  induce,  I,  like  many  others,  mistook  for 
faithfulness.  Experience  has  instructed  me.  I  no  longer  have 
any  question  that  for  the  average  man  sound  habits  of  steady 
endeavor  grow  best  in  fields  of  choice.  Emerson's  words  are  words 
of  soberness :  — 

"  He  that  worketh  high  and  wise 

Nor  pauses  in  his  plan, 
Will  take  the  sun  out  of  the  skies 
Ere  freedom  out  of  man." 

Furthermore,  in  attempting  to  stimulate  persistence,  I  believe 
we  must  ultimately  rely  on  the  rational  interest  in  study  which  we 
can  arouse  and  hold.  Undoubtedly  much  can  be  done  to  save  this 
interest  from  disturbance  and  to  hold  vacillating  attention  fixed 
upon  it ;  but  it,  and  it  alone,  is  to  be  the  driving  force.  Methods 
of  college  government  must  be  reckoned  wise  as  they  push  into 
the  foreground  the  intrinsic  charm  of  wisdom,  mischievous  as 
they  hide  it  behind  fidelity  to  technical  demand.  In  other  matters 
we  readily  acknowledge  interest  as  an  efficient  force.  We  call  it 
a  force  as  broad  as  the  worth  of  knowledge,  and  as  deep  as  the 
curiosity  of  man.  "  Put  your  heart  into  your  work,"  we  say,  "  if 
you  will  make  it  excellent."  A  dozen  proverbs  tell  that  it  is  love 
that  makes  the  world  go  round.  Every  employment  of  life  springs 
from  an  underlying  desire.  The  cricketer  wants  to  win  the  game ; 
the  fisherman  to  catch  fish ;  the  farmer  to  gather  crops ;  the  mer- 
chant to  make  money ;  the  physician  to  cure  his  patient ;  the 
student  to  become  wise.  Eliminate  desire,  put  in  its  place  al- 
legiance to  the  rules  of  a  game,  and  what,  in  any  of  these  cases, 
would  be  the  chance  of  persistent  endeavor?  It  seems  almost 
a  truism  to  say  that  limitations  of  personal  effort  designed  to 
strengthen  persistency  must  be  such  as  will  heighten  the  wish  and 
clear  its  path  to  its  object. 

Obvious  as  is  the  truth  here  presented,  it  seems  in  some  degree 
to  have  escaped  the  attention  of  my  critics.  After  showing  that 
the  grade  of  scholarship  at  Harvard  steadily  rises,  that  our  stu- 
dents become  more  decorous  and  their  methods  of  work  less  child- 
ish, I  stated  that,  under  an  extremely  loose  mode  of  regulating  at- 
tendance five  sixths  of  the  exercises  were  attended  by  all  our  men, 
worst  and  best,  sick  and  well,  most  reckless  and  most  discreet. 
Few  portions  of  my  obnoxious  paper  have  occasioned  a  louder 
outcry.  I  am  told  of  a  neighboring  college  where  the  benches 
show  but  three  per  cent,  of  absentees.  I  wonder  what  the  per- 
centage is  in  Charlestown  State  Prison.  Nobody  doubts  that  at- 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  &ystem.  13 

tendance  will  be  closer  if  compelled.  But  the  interesting  question 
still  remains,  "Are  students  by  such  means  learning  habits  of 
spontaneous  regularity  ?  "  This  question  can  be  answered  only 
when  the  concealing  restraint  is  removed.  It  has  been  removed 
at  Harvard,  —  in  my  judgment  too  largely  removed,  —  and  the 
great  body  of  our  students  are  seen  to  desire  learning  and  to  de- 
sire it  all  the  time.  Is  it  certain  that  the  students  of  other  col- 
leges, if  left  with  little  or  no  restraint,  would  show  a  better  record  ? 
The  point  of  fidelity  and  regularity,  it  is  said,  is  of  supreme  im- 
portance. So  it  is.  But  fidelity  and  regularity  in  study,  not  in 
attending  recitations.  If  ever  the  Harvard  system  is  perfected,  so 
that  students  here  are  as  eager  for  knowledge  as  the  best  class  of 
German  university  men,  I  do  not  believe  we  shall  see  a  lower  rate 
of  absence ;  only  then,  each  absence  will  be  used,  as  it  is  not  at 
present,  for  a  studious  purpose.  The  modern  teacher  stimulates 
private  reading,  exacts  theses,  directs  work  in  libraries.  Pupils 
engaged  in  these  things  are  not  dependent  on  recitations  as  text- 
book school-boys  are.  The  grade  of  higher  education  cannot  rise 
much  so  long  as  the  present  extreme  stress  is  laid  on  appearance 
in  the  class-room. 

In  saying  this  I  would  not  be  understood  to  defend  the  method 
of  dealing  with  absences  which  has  for  some  years  been  practiced 
at  Harvard.  I  think  the  method  bad.  I  have  always  thought  it 
so,  and  have  steadily  favored  a  different  system.  The  behavior 
of  our  students  under  a  regulation  so  loose  seems  to  me  a  striking 
testimony  to  the  scholarly  spirit  prevalent  here.  As  such  I  men- 
tioned it  in  my  first  paper,  and  as  such  I  would  again  call  atten- 
tion to  it.  But  I  am  not  satisfied  with  the  present  good  results. 
I  want  to  impress  on  every  student  that  absence  from  the  class- 
room can  be  justified  by  nothing  short  of  illness  or  a  scholarly  pur- 
pose. For  a  gainful  purpose  the  merchant  is  occasionally  absent 
from  his  office ;  for  a  gainful  purpose  a  scholar  of  mine  may  omit 
a  recitation.  But  Smith  can  be  absent  profitably  when  Brown 
would  meet  with  loss.  I  accordingly  object  to  methods  of  limiting 
absence  which  exact  the  same  numerical  regularity  of  all.  College 
records  may  look  clean,  yet  students  be  learning  little  about  duty. 
Limitation,  in  my  judgment,  should  be  so  adjusted  as  to  strengthen 
the  man's  personal  adhesion  to  plans  of  daily  study.  Such  lim- 
itations cannot  be  fixed  by  statute  and  worked  by  a  single  clerk. 
Moral  discipline  is  not  a  thing  to  be  supplied  by  wholesale.  Pro- 
fessors must  be  individually  charged  with  the  oversight  of  their 
men.  I  should  have  excuses  for  occasional  absence  made  to  the 


14  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

instructor,  and  I  should  expect  him  to  count  it  a  part  of  his  work 
to  see  that  the  better  purposes  of  his  scholars  did  not  grow  feeble. 
A  professor  who  exercised  such  supervisory  power  slackly  would 
make  his  course  the  resort  of  the  indolent ;  one  who  was  over- 
stringent  would  see  himself  deserted  by  indolent  and  earnest  alike. 
My  rule  would  be  that  no  student  be  allowed  to  present  himself  at 
an  examination  who  could  not  show  his  teacher's  certificate  that 
his  attendance  on  daily  work  was  satisfactory.  Traditions  in  this 
country  and  in  Germany  are  so  different  that  I  should  have  confi- 
dence in  a  method  working  well  here  though  it  worked  ill  there. 
At  any  rate,  whenever  it  fell  into  decay,  it  could  —  a  proviso 
necessary  in  all  moral  matters  —  be  readjusted.  A  rule  something 
like  this  the  Harvard  Faculty  has  recently  adopted  by  voting 
that  "  any  instructor,  with  the  approval  of  the  Dean,  may  at  any 
time  exclude  from  his  course  any  student  who  in  his  judgment  has 
neglected  the  work  of  the  course."  Probably  the  amount  of  ab- 
sence which  has  hitherto  occurred  at  Harvard  will  under  this  vote 
diminish. 

Suppose,  then,  by  these  limitations  on  a  student's  caprice  we 
have  secured  his  persistence  in  outward  endeavor,  still  one  thing 
more  is  needed.  We  have  brought  him  bodily  to  a  recitation 
room;  but  his  mind  must  be  there  too,  his  aroused  and  active 
mind.  Limitations  that  will  secure  this  slippery  part  of  the  per- 
son are  difficult  to  devise.  Nevertheless,  they  are  worth  studying. 
Their  object  is  plain.  They  are  to  lead  a  student  to  do  something 
every  day ;  to  aid  him  to  overcome  those  tendencies  to  procrasti- 
nation, self-confidence,  and  passive  absorption,  which  are  the  reg- 
ular and  calculable  dangers  of  youth.  They  are  to  teach  him 
how  not  to  cram,  to  inspire  him  with  respect  for  steady  effort, 
and  to  enable  him  each  year  to  find  such  effort  more  habitual  to 
himself.  These  are  hard  tasks.  The  old  education  tried  to  meet 
them  by  the  use  of  daily  recitations,  a  plan  not  without  advan- 
tages. The  new  education  is  preserving  the  valuable  features  of 
recitations  by  adopting  and  developing  the  Seminar.  But  recita- 
tions pure  and  simple  have  serious  drawbacks.  They  presuppose 
a  text-book,  which,  while  it  brings  definiteness,  brings  also  nar- 
rowness of  view.  The  learner  masters  a  book,  not  a  subject. 
After-life  has  nothing  analogous  to  the  text -book.  A  strug- 
gling man  wins  what  he  wants  from  many  books,  from  his  own 
thought,  from  frequent  consultations.  Why  should  not  a  stu- 
dent be  disciplined  in  the  ways  he  must  afterwards  employ? 
Moreover,  recitations  have  the  disadvantage  that  no  large  number 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  15 

of  men  can  take  part  on  any  single  day.  The  times  of  trial  either 
become  amenable  to  reckoning,  or,  in  order  to  prevent  reckoning, 
a  teacher  must  resort  to  schemes  which  do  not  commend  him  to 
his  class.  Undoubtedly  in  recitation  the  reciter  gains,  but  the 
gains  of  the  rest  of  the  class  are  small.  The  listeners  would  be 
more  profited  by  instruction.  An  hour  with  an  expert  should 
carry  students  forward ;  to  occupy  it  in  ascertaining  where  they 
now  stand  is  wasteful.  For  all  these  reasons  there  has  been  of 
late  years  a  strong  reaction  against  recitations.  Lectures  have 
been  introduced,  and  the  time  formerly  spent  by  a  professor  in 
hearing  boys  is  now  spent  by  boys  in  hearing  a  professor.  Plainly 
in  this  there  is  a  gain,  but  a  gain  which  needs  careful  limitation 
if  the  student's  persistence  of  work  is  to  be  retained.  A  pure 
lecture  system  is  a  broad  road  to  ignorance.  Students  are  enter- 
tained or  bored,  but  at  the  end  of  a  month  they  know  little  more 
than  at  the  beginning.  Lectures  always  seem  to  me  an  inheritance 
from  the  days  when  books  were  not.  Learning  —  how  often  must 
it  be  said !  —  is  not  acceptance ;  it  is  criticism,  it  is  attack,  it  is 
doing.  An  active  element  is  everywhere  involved  in  it.  Personal 
sanction  is  wanted  for  every  step.  One  who  will  grow  wise  must 
perform  processes  himself,  not  sit  at  ease  and  behold  another's 
performance. 

These  simple  truths  are  now  tolerably  understood  at  Harvard. 
There  remain  in  the  college  few  courses  of  pure  recitations  or 
of  pure  lectures.  I  wish  all  were  forbidden  by  statute.  In  al- 
most all  courses,  in  one  way  or  another,  frequent  opportunity  is 
given  the  student  to  show  what  he  is  doing.  In  some,  especially 
in  elementary  courses,  lectures  run  parallel  with  a  text-book.  In 
some,  theses,  that  is,  written  discussions,  are  exacted  monthly, 
half-yearly,  annually,  in  addition  to  examinations.  In  some,  ex- 
aminations are  frequent.  In  some,  a  daily  question,  to  be  an- 
swered in  writing  on  the  spot,  is  offered  to  the  whole  class.  Often, 
especially  in  philosophical  subjects,  the  hour  is  occupied  with  de- 
bate between  officer  and  students.  More  and  more,  physical  sub- 
jects are  taught  by  the  laboratory,  linguistic  and  historical  by  the 
library.  In  a  living  university  a  great  variety  of  methods  spring 
up,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  subject  and  the  personality  of 
the  teacher.  Variety  should  exist.  In  constantly  diversified  ways 
each  student  should  be  assured  that  he  is  expected  to  be  doing 
something  all  the  time,  and  that  somebody  besides  himself  knows 
what  he  is  doing.  As  yet  this  assurance  is  not  attained.  We  can 
only  claim  to  be  working  towards  it.  Every  year  we  discover 


16  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

some  fresh  limitation  which  will  make  persistence  more  natural, 
neglect  more  strange.  I  believe  study  at  Harvard  is  to-day  more 
interested,  energetic,  and  persistent  than  it  has  ever  been  before. 
But  that  is  no  ground  for  satisfaction.  A  powerful  college  must 
forever  be  dissatisfied.  Each  year  it  must  address  itself  anew  to 
strengthening  the  tenacity  of  its  students  in  their  zeal  for  knowl- 
edge. 

By  the  side  of  these  larger  limitations  in  the  interest  of  persist- 
ency, it  may  be  well  to  mention  one  or  two  examples  of  smaller 
ones  which  have  the  same  end  in  view.  By  some  provision  it 
must  be  made  difficult  to  withdraw  from  a  study  once  chosen. 
Choice  should  be  deliberate  and  then  be  final.  It  probably  will  not 
be  deliberate  unless  it  is  understood  to  be  final.  A  few  weeks  may 
be  allowed  for  an  inspection  of  a  chosen  course,  but  at  the  close  of 
the  first  month's  teaching  the  Harvard  Faculty  tie  up  their  stu- 
dents and  allow  change  only  on  petition  and  for  the  most  convinc- 
ing cause.  An  elective  college  which  did  not  make  changes  of 
electives  difficult  would  be  an  engine  for  discouraging  intentional- 
ity  and  persistence. 

I  incline  to  think,  too,  that  a  regulation  forbidding  elementary 
courses  in  the  later  years  would  render  our  education  more  co- 
herent. In  this  matter  elective  colleges  have  an  opportunity  which 
prescribed  ones  miss.  In  order  to  be  fair  to  all  the  sciences,  Col- 
lege Faculties  are  obliged  to  scatter  fragments  of  them  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  prescribed  curricula.  Twenty-five 
years  ago  every  Harvard  man  waited  till  his  senior  year  before 
beginning  philosophy,  acoustics,  history,  and  political  economy. 
To-day  the  fourteen  other  New  England  colleges,  most  of  whom, 
like  the  Harvard  of  twenty-five  years  ago,  offer  a  certain  number 
of  elective  studies,  still  show  senior  years  largely  occupied  with 
elementary  studies.  Five  forbid  philosophy  before  the  senior 
year ;  eight,  political  economy ;  two,  history ;  six,  geology.  Out 
of  the  seven  colleges  which  offer  some  one  of  the  eastern  lan- 
guages, all  except  Harvard  oblige  the  alphabet  to  be  learned  in 
the  senior  year.  Of  the  six  which  offer  Italian  or  Spanish,  Har- 
vard alone  permits  a  beginning  to  be  made  before  the  junior  year, 
while  two  take  up  these  languages  for  the  first  time  in  the  senior 
year.  In  three  New  England  colleges  German  cannot  be  begun 
till  the  junior  year.  In  a  majority,  a  physical  subject  is  begun  in 
the  junior  and  another  in  the  senior  year.  At  Yale  nobody  but 
a  senior  can  study  chemistry.  Such  postponement,  and  by  con- 
sequence such  fragmentary  work,  may  be  necessary  where  early 


Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System.  17 

college  years  are  crowded  with  prescribed  studies.  But  an  elec- 
tive system  can  employ  its  later  years  to  better  advantage.  It  can 
bring  to  a  mature  understanding  the  interests  which  freshmen  and 
sophomores  have  already  acquired.  Elementary  studies  are  not 
maturing  studies.  They  do  not  make  the  fibre  of  a  student  firm. 
To  studies  of  a  solidifying  sort  the  last  years  should  be  devoted. 
I  should  like  to  forbid  seniors  to  take  any  elementary  study  what- 
ever, and  to  forbid  juniors  all  except  philosophy,  political  economy, 
history,  fine  arts,  Sanskrit,  Hebrew,  and  law.  Under  such  a  rule 
we  should  graduate  more  men  who  would  be  first  rate  at  some- 
thing ;  and  a  man  who  is  first  rate  at  something  is  generally  pretty 
good  at  anything. 

Such,  then,  are  a  few  examples  of  the  ways  in  which  choice  may 
be  limited  so  as  to  become  strong.  They  are  but  examples,  in- 
tended merely  to  draw  attention  to  the  kinds  of  limitation  still 
possible.  Humble  ways  they  may  seem,  not  particularly  interest- 
ing to  hear  about ;  business  methods  one  might  call  them.  But 
by  means  of  these  and  such  as  these  the  young  scholar  becomes 
clearer  in  intention,  larger  in  information,  hardier  in  persistence. 
In  urging  such  means  I  shall  be  seen  to  be  no  thick  and  thin  ad- 
vocate of  election.  That  I  have  never  been.  Originally  a  doubter, 
I  have  come  to  regard  the  elective  system,  that  is,  election  under 
such  limitations  as  I  have  described,  as  the  safest  —  indeed  as  the 
only  possible  —  course  which  education  can  now  take.  I  advocate 
it  heartily  as  a  system  which  need  not  carry  us  too  fast  or  too  far 
in  any  one  direction,  as  a  system  so  inherently  flexible  that  its  own 
great  virtues  readily  unite  with  those  of  an  alien  type.  Under  its 
sheltering  charge  the  worthier  advantages  of  both  grouped  and 
prescribed  systems  are  attainable.  I  proclaim  it,  therefore,  not 
as  a  popular  cry  nor  as  an  educational  panacea,  but  as  a  sober  op- 
portunity for  moral  and  intellectual  training.  Limited  as  it  is  at 
Harvard,  I  see  that  it  works  admirably  with  the  studious,  stimu- 
latingly  with  those  of  weaker  will,  not  unendurably  with  the  de- 
praved. These  are  great  results.  They  cannot  be  set  aside  by 
calling  them  the  outcome  of  "  individualism."  In  a  certain  sense 
they  are.  But  "individualism  "  is  an  uncertain  term.  In  every  one 
of  us  there  is  a  contemptible  individuality,  grounded  in  what  is 
ephemeral  and  capriciously  personal.  Systematic  election,  as  I 
have  shown,  puts  limitations  on  this.  But  there  is  a  noble  individ- 
uality which  should  be  the  object  of  our  fostering  care.  Nothing 
that  lends  it  strength  and  fineness  can  be  counted  trivial.  To 

2 


18  Possible  Limitations  of  the  Elective  System. 

form  a  true  individuality  is,  indeed,  the  ideal  of  the  elective  sys- 
tem.    Let  me  explain  my  conception  of  that  ideal. 

George  Herbert,  praising  God  for  the  physical  world  which  He 
has  made,  says  that  in  it  "  all  things  have  their  will,  yet  none  but 
thine."  Such  a  free  harmony  between  thinking  man  and  a  Lord 
of  his  thought  it  is  the  office  of  education  to  bring  about.  At  the 
start  it  does  not  exist.  The  child  is  aware  of  his  own  will,  and  he 
is  aware  of  little  else.  He  imagines  that  one  pleasing  fancy  may 
be  willed  as  easily  as  another.  As  he  matures,  he  discovers  t^at 
his  will  is  effective  when  it  accords  with  the  make  of  the  world 
and  ineffective  when  it  does  not.  This  discovery,  bringing  as  it 
does  increased  respect  for  the  make  of  the  world,  and  even  for  its 
maker,  degrades  or  ennobles  according  as  the  facts  of  the  world 
are  nqjv  viewed  as  restrictive  finalities  or  as  an  apparatus  for 
larger  self-expression.  Seeing  the  power  of  that  which  is  not  him- 
self, a  man  may  become  passively  receptive,  and  say,  "  Then  I  am 
to  have  no  will  of  my  own ;  "  or  he  may  become  newly  energetic, 
knowing  that  though  he  can  have  no  will  of  his  separate  own,  yet 
all  the  power  of  God  is  his  if  he  will  but  understand.  A  man  of 
the  latter  sort  is  spiritually  educated.  Much  still  remains  to  be 
done  in  understanding  special  laws,  and  with  each  fresh  under- 
standing a  fresh  possibility  of  individual  life  is  disclosed.  But  the 
worth  of  the  whole  process  lies  in  the  man's  honoring  his  own  will, 
but  honoring  it  only  as  it  grows  strong  through  accordance  with 
the  will  of  God. 

Now  into  our  colleges  comes  a  mixed  multitude  made  up  of  all 
the  three  classes  named  :  the  childish,  who  imagine  they  can  will 
anything ;  the  docile,  so  passive  in  the  presence  of  an  ordered  world 
that  they  have  little  individual  will  left ;  the  spiritually-minded  or 
original,  who  with  strong  interests  of  their  own  seek  to  develop 
these  through  living  contact  with  truths  which  they  have  not 
made.  Our  educational  modes  must  meet  them  all,  respecting 
their  wills  wherever  wise,  and  teaching  the  feeble  to  discriminate 
fanciful  from  righteous  desires.  For  carrying  forward  such  a 
training  the  elective  system  seems  to  me  to  have  peculiar  apti- 
tudes. What  I  have  called  its  limitations  will  be  seen  to  be  spirit- 
ual assistances.  To  the  further  invention  of  such  there  is  no  end. 
A  watchful  patience  is  the  one  great  requisite,  patience  in  di- 
rectors, instructed  criticism  on  the  part  of  the  public,  and  a  brave 
expression  of  confidence  when  confidence  is  seen  to  have  been 
earned. 

G.  H.  Palmer. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 


^^^m  B  LAST 


YC  04049 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


